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MEXICO. 

SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE 

NEW GUIDE TO MEXICO, 

PUBUSHED BY 

THE WHITAKER & RAY COIVIPANY, 

San Francisco, 

SCALE OF STATUTE MILES. 



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GUIDE TO MEXICO 



CHRISTOBAL HIDALGO. 



Not in the interest of Railway nor Land Company nor 
private party. 



The only ^* Guide" that gives correct and reliable in- 
formation about all sections of Mexico, and 
how to go there and secure desirable 
homes or good situations. 



save Americans who visit Mexico for business or 
pleasure much money, valuable time and 
pettv annovance. 



Published for the Author 

BV 

THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY 

[incorporated] 

San Francisco, Cal. 

I Q o o 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Gotsgr&S9i 
Of«ce of the 

Keglster ef Copyrights 

56908 



Copyright, 1900y 
by . 
The Whitaker <i- Bay Company. 



SECOND COPY* 






CONTENTS 

Political Organization 17 

Area 18 

Population 18 

Property 18 

Taxation 20 

Industries 20 

Eailways . 21 

Telegraphs 21 

Postal Service 21 

The Metric System 22 

Education 22 

Climate ,. 23 

Eesources of Agriculture 2-1 

Corn 26^ 

-Wheat 26- 

Barley '. 28^ 

Oats ., 28 

Rice 28 

"Vegetables 29 

Tobacco 29' 

Sugar 30 

Cotton 31 

Fruits 32 

Oranges 32 

Lemons and Limes 34 

Bananas 31 

Pineapples > 37 

Cocoanuts 38 

Other Fruits 3a 

Coffee 38 

Vanilla . 39' 

Chocolate , 40 

Eubber 4a 

(5) 



6 CONTi^:NTS. 

AVoods 42 

Fibres 42 

Cattle Industry 42 

Hog Breeding 44 

The Dairy 45 

Poultry and Eggs 45 

Fish / "" 46 

Coast Advantages 46 

Farm Stock . / " 47 

Clearing Land 47 

Furniture 47 

Common Labor r •. . 50 

Stenography 50 

Bookkeepers" 52 

Minor Positions 53 

How to Get Positions 54 

Business Enterprises bb 

Manufacturing Industries 60 

Important Cities (i'i 

Chihuahua 62 

Santa Rosalia 63 

Jimenez 63 

Escalon 63 

Lerdo 64 

Zacatecas 64 

Aguas Calientes 65 

San Luis Potosi ^6 

Tampico ^'^'^ 

Lagos <>'^ 

Leon ^y 

Silao • • «*J 

Guanajuato • • "^^^ 

Irapuato ^'^ 

Guadalajara ^^ 



CONTENTS. 7 

Salamanca 72 

Celaya 73 

Qiieretaro 73 

Tula 73 

Pacbuca 74 

City of Mexico 76 

Mexican National Railway 76 

Monterey 77 

Toluca .' 77 

International Railway 77 

The Monterey & Mexican Gulf Railway. .... 78 

The Mexican, C^iernavaca & Pacific Railway. . 78 

The Hidalgo & Northeastern Railway 79 

The Mexican Southern Railway 79 

The National Isthmus of Tehuantepec Rail- 
way 79 

Mexican Railway 80 

Yera Cruz . . /. 80 

(^ordoba 82 

Orizaba . 82 

Mai Trata 84 

Apazaco 84 

Puebla 84 

Interoceanic Railway 84 

Jalapa 84 

Alverado Railway 85 

Prontera 86 

How to go 87 

Silver 90 

Christmas in Mexico 96 

The Bull Fight 102 

The Theatre 100 

The Shrine of Guadalupe 108 

Ancient Wonders 11" 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIO^S 

Pyramid of the Moon and Pulque Eaneh — 

San Juan Teotihuacan 2 

Eanch Life — San Nicholas, Vera Cruz 11 

Washing in San Juan Eiver ID 

Vineyard — Parras, Nuevo Leon 27 

Orange Grove — Guadalajara, Jalisco 35 

Eubber Eanch — Acayucan, Vera Cruz 43 

Lemon Grove — Coatepec, Vera Cruz 51 

Quinine, Chocolate, Vanilla Trees — Tuxpan, 

Vera Cruz 59 

"War Dance of the Xative Indians 67 

Alameda, Mexico City 75 

Coffee Eanch — Orizaba Valley 85 

Year-Old Banana — Frontera, Tabasco .... 99 

Date Palm Grove — Carmen, Tabasco 99 

Pyramid of the Sun — San Juan Teotihuacan, 

Mexico 115 

(8) 



MEXICO. 



MEXICO is the only country in the world that 
can offer settlers cheap homes in rich sections, 
without frost, with health equal to the average 
health of the United States. 

The coffee and fruit belt of the State of Vera 
Cruz is the most desirable for those who wish to 
till the soil, for the reason that coffee and all the 
fruits of the tropics grow to perfection, while 
most of the products of colder countries also grow 
side by side with what cannot be produced in any 
part of the United States. Parts of the States of 
Tabasco, Oaxaca, and Moreles, adjacent to the 
State of Vera Cruz, also are desirable, though, with 
the exception of Tabasco, more remote from water 
transportation than the State of Vera Cruz. The 
Gulf of Mexico is the great cheap-freight route 
for the products of Mexico to the United States. 

Peaches, apples, pears, grapes and wheat do not 
thrive with coffee, but they Degin to appear in 
sight of where coffee stops. Tobacco, equal to 
that of Cuba, grows with coffee, and corn, not 
much surpassed in Illinois, grows anywhere in the 
coffee belt, or on the coast, where the country is 

(9) 



10 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

too low for coffee. Sugar grows wherever tliere 
is coffee^ and even better in the low country. Po- 
tatoes, tomatoes, and other vegetables, common in 
Florida, or California, grow anywhere. Bananas 
grow wherever there is coffee, and yet better in 
the low country, while pineapples grow nicely up 
to the center of the coffee belt, and to perfection 
in the low country. No country surpasses all the 
coffee belt and the coast for oranges, while the 
possibilities of lemons are not less than other 
countries that are not exempt from' frost, while 
cocoanuts abound on the coast, and mangoes, alli- 
gator pears, and other delicate fruits of the tropics 
are on the coast and up to the center of the coffee 
belt. 

Lower than one thousand feet above sea level, 
and more than five thousand feet above sea level, 
is not suited to coffee growing. 

A little more than one hundred miles from the 
port of Vera Cruz, the inhabited country rises 
more than eight thousand feet above the sea level, 
and the uninhabited to more than seventeen thou- 
sand feet, where eternal snow crowns the moun- 
tain above twelve thousand feet. Forty miles 
from the snow line is the cream of the coffee belt. 

The City of Mexico is nearly eight thousand 
feet high; and corn, wheat, barley, peaches, apples, 
grapes, pears aiul strawljerries grow in many sec- 
tions of altitude between six thousand and eight 
thousand feet. The high country is not exempt 
from frost, though fresh strawberries are in the 
market of tlie City of Mexico every day in the 
year. 



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13 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

Cattle, sheep, goats and hogs ahound in nearly 
all the high country, though long droughts render 
that part of ^lexico unsafe for small farmers from 
the United States. It is also the pulque country, 
where the national drink of Mexico grows in the 
juice of a plant, a very profitable industry, though 
some seven years are required to make it produc- 
tive. 

The State of Jalisco, of which Guadalajara, the 
prettiest Spanish-American city on the continent,, 
is the capital, is a good liealthy country. But 
there is not that diversity of crops that makes the 
Vera Cruz belt the garden spot of the Eepublic, 
although oranges and sugar do well, and other 
fruits abound low down on the Pacific side, while 
no part of the country boasts finer cattle. It is 
not a coffee country and has no transportation,, 
except all rail, without competition. 

Guadalajara has more. than one hundred thou- 
sand inhabitants, and is a manufacturing city of 
considerable promise, with room for enterprise. 

The other sections of Mexico are not specially 
promising to people who want to grow crops or 
raise cattle, as their products will not bear ship- 
ment to the Ignited States on a large scale, and 
farming for home consumption is not a very prof- 
itable business. 

Tampico has back country that is productive,, 
but not exempt from frost. 

The mining, manufacturing and commercial 
cities will be noted in connection with business, 
positions and skilled labor. 

The coast country of Vera Cruz and adjacent 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 13 

States is the natural field for rubber production, 
that is, practically unlimited, while there is no 
better cattle section anywhere, as pasture never 
fails. The poultry business has great possibili- 
ties, as Vera Cruz is a good market for fresh 
chickens and eggs, always at paying prices. 

The city of Vera Cruz is the only important 
point not usually free from yellow fever, and it 
has not been epidemic there in two years. Yel- 
low fever never visits the farming districts, 
though trade with Vera Cruz is not interrupted 
when there is an epidemic there, for the reason 
that the natives of Vera Cruz never have it, and 
there is no danger of it going inland, except to 
Cordoba, which has an epidemic about once in ten 
years. Vera Cruz would never have an epidemic 
if always clean, and the disposition to keep her 
clean is growing. Trains and steamers run in- 
land every day when there is an epidemic in Vera 
Cruz, the same as when there is no fever there, for 
the reason the people in the country know they 
are safe from contagion. 

The other maladies of Mexico are identically 
the same as are common everywhere in the United 
States, and no more serious. 

The question of homes in Mexico, whether for 
families or single persons, is an interesting and a 
very important one, little understood, and not 
duly appreciated in the United States, for the rea- 
son that the information within the reach of the 
public is mostly incorrect and misleading, being 
from interested land and railroad companies, seek- 
ing to induce settlers and travelers their way. 



14 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

There are land companies that describe their own 
property correctly, and railways that do not mis- 
represent the scenery along their own lines, hnt 
that conceal what may be more desirable to Amer- 
icans elsewhere. This is natural. 

For these reasons this effort to give correct and 
impartial facts, entirely independent of land 
dealers and railroad people, is made in the inter- 
est of those who may wish to visit Mexico, seek- 
ing homes, business or pleasure, so they may avoid 
the mistakes, delays and needless expenses to 
which Americans are almost always subjected on 
their first visits to Mexico. For this reason this 
information cannot be given free, as are the adver- 
tisements of interested land and railroad people. 
I'he small price charged covers actual labor and 
expenses. 

The first step that should be taken by all who 
contemplate a visit to Mexico, no matter for what 
purpose, is to learn enough of the Spanish lan- 
guage to get along without an interpreter. This 
is an easy, and should be a pleasant, task. Get a 
De Torno's method of teaching Spanish to an 
English speaking person. There are other good 
books, but De Torno's is the simplest and best for 
a person who cannot have a teacher. If your 
bookstore has none the book may be ordered from 
D. Appleton & Co., Xo. 3 Bond Street, New York, 
the ])ul)lisliers. Tlie price is two dollars for the 
book, with Spanish key to the English exercises. 
But in buying or ordering l)e sure to get a l)ook to 
teach an American S])anisli, not a Spaniard Ku- 
glish, as this last would not teach you the pronun- 



GUIDE ro MEXICO. 15 

elation of Spanish. Learn first the sound of the 
Spanish letters. This is easy, as a letter has hut 
■ one sound. Then learn the Spanish of the first 
lesson, which is opposite to the English, so you 
know it perfectly. Then proceed from lesson to 
lesson, the same way, never passing a lesson un - 
learned. Be careful to learn and remember the 
tenses of the verbs, and especially the tenses of the 
irregular verbs that are irregular, and the genders 
of the nouns. 

Moderate application should make any one of 
ordinary capacity master of the book in three 
months, so every word and feature mil become 
natural as breathing. Thus qualified, it will be 
easy to get along with Spanish-speaking people, 
and every day of practice with them will make 
one more a]id more proficient. It would keep a 
hundred good gold dollars in the pocket of any 
tourist and give him a thousand dollars more 
pleasure and satisfaction than is possible with the 
best interpreter, and double the gain of a settler, 
a man of business or a person depending on a 
salaried position. 

Some knowledge of the language is half the 
battle and compensates for the want of capital to 
a great extent. It is folly to go there entirely 
ignorant of Spanish to engage in business or seek 
employment. 

Those who wish to become bookkeepers, sales- 
men or stenographers should learn the Spanish 
with some assistance of a teacher and an Ens^lish 
and a Spanish dictionary, in order to learn more 
words than the text-book contains. 



16 aVIDE TO MEXICO. 

Spanish may be learned without interfering 
with the regular duties of daily life, on the way 
to and from work, at night and in the early morn- 
ing. Ten new or difficult words may be learned 
daily by writing them on a card and keeping them 
in sight when at work. In one day they will be- 
come familar. Thus, in a few months, a full stock 
of words- will be garnered in. the storehouse of 
memory, ready for future use. 

The farmer who knows a little Spanish can 
make twice the headway with his work and the 
country people as he can if he knows none. 

The natives are very kind and gladly help one 
along in the use of the language, if one is social 
and disposed to make the best of his new situa- 
tion. 

The next step, after learning the rudiments of 
the language, is to decide what one intends to do 
and select a held in which to labor, and the most 
desirable route to reach it. 

A man of family should go alone and prepare 
his home before he moves his family. This is 
cheaper, safer and better than having a family in 
a strange land without a home. 

Farmers might select one among them to go 
and find a desirable location for a settlement, and 
thus save much expense. 

Persons wishing to engagein commerce or man- 
ufacturing should go in person and select a field 
for their operations. 

Clerks, bookkeepers and stenographers may se- 
cure work by advertising in Mexico and by cor- 
respondence before going, so as to have work ready 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 17 

on arrival. How to do this will be explained in 
due time and place. 

As people going to a foreign country will natu- 
rally wish to know something of its government 
and institutions, it may be well to dispose of these 
features at once. 



POLITICAL ORGANIZATION. 

Mexico is a Republic of twenty-seven States, 
two Territories and the Federal District, which is 
the Capitol and the City of Mexico, the same as 
the District of Columbia, and Washington City are 
the Capitol of the United States. The Constitu- 
tion of the country is modelled after that of the 
United States. 

The President is elected for four years, and 
has a Cabinet very similar to that of the United 
States. 

The Congress and Senate are elected, a Con- 
gressman for every 40,000 inhabitants and frac- 
tion between 20,000 and 40,000, for two years, and 
two Senators for each State and two for the Fed- 
eral District, for four years, all by popular vote. 

The Courts are much the same as those of the 
United States, the Judges of which are appointed 
by the Ministers of Justice and Education. 

The States elect their Governors and Legisla- 
tors and are equally as independent of the Fed- 
eral Government as those of the United States. 

Mexico — 2 



18 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



AREA. 

There are 770,000 square miles, with 6,000 
miles of coast, 1,700 on the Gulf and 4,300 on the 
Pacific Ocean, while the country is 2,000 miles 
long and from 140 to 750 miles wide. 

The Gulf ports of entry for foreign commerce 
are: Vera Cruz, Tampico, Frontera, Progreso, 
Coatzacoalcos, Campeche, Tuxpan, Carmen, An- 
ton Lizardo and Matamoras; and those on the Pa- 
cific: Mazatlan, Manzanillo, Guaymas, San Bias, 
La Paz, Puerto Augel, Acapulco, Salina Cruz, 
Tonala, Ensenada, and Soconusco or San Benito. 

POPULATION. 

There are about fourteen million people in 
Mexico, of which some nine and a half million are 
of the laboring classes, including Lidians, and 
there are some three hundred thousand foreign- 
ers, representing nearly all nations, in. the indus- 
tries of mining, manufacturing, trading and agri- 
culture. 

PROPERTY. 

The titles and riglijts to property are good a& 
anywhere, and one is protected in same by law as 
much as in the United States. 

Tlie wealth of the country is increasing very 
rapidly, so that land and houses will be worth very 
nuuli more a few years hence than they are now^ 
in 1898. 



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20 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



TAXATION. 

The State tax on lands and houses vary from .75 
to 1.50 per year on the $1,000 of assessed value, 
which is always moderate. 

Federal taxes are in the forms of duty on im- 
ported goods and stamp on all business documents, 
and amount in all to some fifty million dollars 
per annum. 

There is little likelihood that taxes will ever be 
higher and a strong probability they may be lower 
than thev are now. 



INDUSTRIES. 

There are some one hundred and fifty cotton 
and woolen factories, with capital of some twenty- 
five million dollars invested, supporting, in the 
production of material, in the field, and by labor 
in the mills, some sixty-five thousand families. 
The annual production of the factories equal the 
amount of capital invested. 

There are some dozen paper mills, several glass 
factories, quite a number of breweries, some fruit 
preserving establishments, iron, brass and nail 
foundries, cotton seed, castor oil mills and soap 
factories, all doing well, with yet more room for 
skill and capital in any of them. 

The government is very liberal to all who wish 
to establish industries to develop the resources of 
the country. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 21 



RAILWAYS. 

There are nearly nine thousand miles of rail- 
ways in the Eepiiblie, and the mileage is rapidly 
increasing. They have all been built in the last 
twenty years, by more than a hundred million dol- 
lars' aid from the Mexicon Government. It has 
all been practically the inspiring work of one man 
- — President Diaz — without whose cold judgment 
and ,2:uiding hand of destiny the country might yet 
be the bloody scene of revolution. 



TELEGRAPHS. 

The railroad companies have their own wires 
and do public business, while the Mexican Govern- 
ment has some thirty thousand miles of wire, 
reaching the most remote sections of the Republic 
and the United States and extending service by 
cable to all parts of the civilized world. 



POSTAL SERVICE. ^ 

Is about the same and equal to that of the 
United States, with some sixteen hundred offices 
in the country, and is in the Postal Union. There 
are carriers and free delivery in all cities that have 
population to entitle them to have that system. 

Letter postage is five cents per half ounce and 
the second class is two cents for sixteen ounces or 
fractional part thereof, to all parts of the Republic 
and foreign countries in the Postal Union. 



22: GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

Local postage carries a letter from the United 
States to any part of Mexico. Many people do 
not kiiow tills fact and waste stamps when writ- 
ing to Mexico. 

THE METEIC SYSTEM 

of, weights and measures has been adopted by 
law, -which makes a uniform standard the first, 
time in the history of the country. Before this 
there was much confusion from different methods 
in vogue. 

EDUCATION. 

There are some eleven thousand public primary 
schools in the Eepublic, with some seven hundred 
tiiousand average attendance. Primary education 
is compulsory. There are also many church and 
private primary schools which have a respectable 
patronage. Most of the national schools have 
classes ior teaching arts and trades. There are 
also colleges, military, -medical, musical, profes- 
sional, of high grades. 

There are some seventy-five public libraries in 
the Eepublic, the National one alone, in the Gity 
of ]Mexico, containing some two hundred and sev- 
enty thousand volumes. The government spends 
more than five million dollars a year in education. 

There are more than three hundred and sixty 
periodicals published in the country, some of 
which are daily ne\vspa])ers in English, while there 
are spme in Erench and German. 

There is complete religious liberty, the same as 
all creeds enjoy in the United States. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 23 

Any person may reside and travel at pleasure 
anywhere in the Eepublic without passport or 
other document, whose conduct is respectable and 
law-abiding. 

Law and justice are equal to all classes^ and 
life and property are more safe and secure than in 
New York or Chicago. 

CLIMATE. 

Almost enough has been said on this subject, 
as the climate of Mexico is difficult to define or 
understand. 

The coast country and up to an elevation of 
some 3,000 feet is known as the "Hot Country/^ 
although the average temperature the year round 
is no more than 75° to 82° Fahrenheit, no more 
than Florida would have, were she equally exemf t 
from frost. What is called the temperate zone, 
from three thousand to eight thousand feet eleva- 
tion, often has hard frost at the top, while the 
temperature is 75° at the bottom and 50° at the 
center, but the average annual temperature is 60° 
to 70° over the zone. The third zone, from eight 
thousand, feet to the eternal snow line, is scarcely 
worth the time and space required for discussion. 
There is not much industry nor production above 
nine thousand feet. 

At eight thousand feet and higher the sun 
may glow with as much force as at three thousand 
feet, but the night is sure to be chilly, sometimes 
frosty. 

The air is bracing and healthy in the high zoile, 



24 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

and warm and moist in the coast zone, though 
very salubrious as a rule. The near proximity of 
vast sheets of water and constant sea breezes 
modify the heat of the "Hot Country" to a degree 
till the heat is not near as oppressive in the shade 
as it is in the United States in hot summer 
weather, while the nights are almost uniformly 
cool and refreshing. Sunstroke is unknown. 
Water is good and abundant everywhere. 

RESOURCES OF AGRICULTUJRE. 

As already stated, no other country in the world 
can rival Mexico as a practical and profitable field 
of agriculture, for the reason the crops of her frost 
zone are ripe when the frost comes, and the lower 
zones are absolutely exempt from frost. The pro- 
ducts of the world, without one exception, have 
their native soil and climate in abundance and to 
spare in Mexico. 

Land and labor are cheap, hence a hundred dol- 
lars gold invested in farming in Mexico will yield 
more profit than a thousand dollars in the United 
States, with about one twenty-fifth part of taxes 
required in the United States. 

Land that costs anywhere from twenty-five dol- 
lars to one hundred and twenty-five dollars per 
acre, in productive sections of the United States, 
can be bought from four dollars to ten dollars 
gold, per acre in the coffee and fruit zones of Mex- 
ico. On this expensive soil of the United States, 
corn, oats, wheat, potatoes, and some other vege- 
tables grow, never exempt from frost, often with 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 25 

little or no profit, above the cost of production 
and marketing. If there is a little profit fuel and 
stock feed, and idleness in winter, eat most of it 
up. The same crops, wheat and oats alone ex- 
cepted, grow with much less labor on the clieap 
Mexican land, while coffee, sugar, and many trop- 
ical fruits, grow with them, in the coffee belt, and 
all, except coffee, in the low belt, with many other 
products that do not grow with coffee. 

The present low price of coffee has wiped out 
most of the fancy profits of recent years in that 
industry. But vanilla still produces more than 
thirty dollars per acre, while chocolate reaches 
two hundred dollars. Eubber will produce more 
than three hundred dollars per acre, but six years 
are required to grow the tree, which is good for a 
lifetime after it once\ becomes productive. Price 
of crude rubber has more than doubled in ten 
years. Many other crops will produce as much, 
value on an acre as a small farm of corn or wheat 
in the United States. Food products can be 
grown for home consumption while cultivating 
the money crops, without extra cost. 

Good native labor costs an average of fifty cents 
Mexican money a day, but sixty-two and one-half 
cents per day gets nearly fifty per cent more labor 
and secures the best hands. The same labor 
would cost one dollar a day in the United States. 
The labor in Mexico in gold, at the last price 
named there, would cost seventy cents a day less 
than in the United States. 

The one hundred dollars gold, to be invested in 
Mexico against one thousand dollars in the United 



26 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

States, is worth two hundred and ten dollars in 
the silver currency of the country, which buys 
more labor or native food than the same amount 
in gold will buy in the United States. 

The money crops, for export, are sold for gold 
value, which produces a big sum when converted 
into silver. Gold has no other use in Mexico, and 
is never seen in circulation. 

Two crops of corn, beans, and many vegetables 
can be grown in a year in the coast country, and 
two years' work can be done in one year, as there 
is no winter nor other weather to stop farm labor 
a dozen days in the year; and stock require no 
food in winter more than they need in the United 
States in summer. 

COEK 

Corn is a native of Mexico, or was cultivated by 
the Indians there a thousand years before the dis- 
€Overv of the new world by Columbus. It is the 
greatest crop in the country, as it grows every- 
where, and is the bread of the poor. It yields as 
much as seventy-five bushels per acre under im- 
perfect Mexican culture, on irrigated land, and as 
much as forty bushels from natural moisture. It 
is planted on the coast in May and November, for 
the two annual crops. 

WHEAT. 

Mexican wheat took the first prize against the 
world at the Centennial Exposition in Philadel- 



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28 GUIDE TO MEXICO, 

phia, in 1876. It yields as much as eighty bushels 
per acre, under crude system of Mexican culti- 
vation, on irrigated land, and as much as twenty- 
five bushels with natural moisture. One bushel 
is worth more than twice as much in Mexico as in 
the United States. The crop is by no means cer- 
tain without irrigation. The production could be 
greatly increased by more extensive irrigation, but 
when in excess of native consumption the price 
for export would not justify the cost. 

For these reasons it would be folly to go to 
Mexico to grow wheat on a small scale, as irrigated 
lands are not for sale cheap in small lots, and 
wheat lands without irrigation would not be prof- 
itable. 

BAELEY. 

The production of barley is increasing since 
breweries started to work, though it grows under 
the same conditions as wheat, and is not a crop to 
tempt small American farmers. The straw is sold 
for hay at double the price of wheat straw. 

OATS. 

Oats grow in the same districts as wheat and 
barley, and under similar conditions, with favor- 
able results. 

EICE. 

The Aztecs used rice for a food before the Span- 
iards disturbed the languid tranquility of the 
country. It has received less attention than al- 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 29 

most any other article, . though it yields abund- 
antly in the low coast country, and would pay a 
net profit of some two hundred per cent. Every 
body eats rice in Mexico. 

VEGETABLES. 

Nearly all the garden vegetables of the United 
States and Europe grow well all over Mexico, 
except the Irish potato, which does not do well in 
the very low, moist country, though water melons 
do as well in some parts of the coast of Vera Cruz 
as in Georgia, and musk melons better than any- 
where in the United States. 

TOBACCO. 

The Aztecs smoked through amber tubes long 
before the Spaniards ever saw Mexico. Tobacco 
is a native of the country. 

The State of Vera Cruz grows a very fine, mild 
leaf, equal to the best produced in Cuba, while a 
belt of some bordering States claims the same 
superior stock. 

The States of Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan, 
Guerrero, Michoacan, Jalisco, Colima, Sinaloa, 
Hidalgo, and the southern part of Tamaulipas, 
also grow tobacco, somewhat heavier and stronger 
than that of the Vera Cruz belt, but desirable 
working stock, that makes very popular goods for 
smokers. 

Thus it will be "seen that half the States are 
tobacco growers, and the land suitable for this in- 



30 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

diistry is nnlimited, as it will remain for many 
generations. The best tobacco lands in Cuba and 
Manila are nearly exhausted, so that Mexico is 
rapidly becoming the fine tobacco field of the 
world. 

The crop is surer in the coast and coffee belts of 
the Vera Cruz country than elsewhere, for the 
reason that there are almost always seasonable 
rains, when it is dry in other districts. 

The price of tobacco advanced as heavily as 
coffee declined during 1897. The cultivation was 
very profitable at prices of 1896, more than two 
hundred per cent, when the price was twenty-five 
cents to forty-five cents per pound. Prices are 
twice to three times as much now, though too high 
to remain, when the production approaches what 
consumers require, yet the profit will always be 
large. 

The yield is two thousand five hundred to four 
thousand pounds per acre. At a clear profit of 
fifty cents a pound, which the crop of 1897 is giv- 
ing, the average result is fifteen hundred dollars 
clear gain per acre. The profit will not likely run 
under five hundred dollars per acre in this age, 
and there is not much probability that the pres- 
ent high prices will decline much in the next few 
years. 

Hence, a few acres in tobacco will yiehl a sure 
fortune, at less cost and risk than gold seeking in 
Alaska. 

SUGAE. 

The coast country and coffee belt is the best 
sugar territory in the world, producing from 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 31 

fifty per cent to one hundred per cent more to the 
acre than Cuba or Brazil, running as high as six 
thousand pounds of dry sugar to the acre. The 
molasses and other waste go into rum, which pays 
the expenses of the plantation. 

Cane will grow on ten times more land than will 
ever be planted. There are some plantations that 
make two or three million pounds sugar annually. 

One planting is sufficient for six to fifteen 
years, according to the land and locality. 

Little more than enough for home consump- 
tion is now produced, but some experiments of 
exporting in 1897 were very satisfactory. The 
sugar is very sweet, nearly double the strength of 
beet sugar. 

Small farmers may make common brown sugar,, 
for home use, by a process about as simple and 
cheap as that of making sorghum molasses in the 
United States. 

COTTOK. 

Mexico is the home of cotton. The Spaniards 
found it and its products there. There is one 
species that grows and produces for many years, 
becoming a tree from one planting, while the 
other is the same as that grown in the United 
States, and planted every year. The latter has 
the best fibre. 

Cotton grows and produces well in the coast 
country, and is cultivated to some extent in the 
States of Nuevo Leon, Durango, Chihuahua, 
Oaxaca and Coahuila, where there is plenty of 
land suitable for this industry. 



32 OUIDE TO MEXICO. 

There is nowhere near enough produced for 
Tiome consumption, though the profit is three 
times as much as in the United States; and there 
is a market for millions of pounds of cotton seed 
oil, annually imported from the United States. 

FRUITS. 

A greater variety and quantity of fruits of a 
high commercial value might be grown in Mexico 
than in any other country in the world. 

Central and northern Mexico might outrival 
California in the production of apples, pears, 
peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, olives, grapes, 
and all the berries, as there are some grown of ex- 
ceptional fine quality under crude methods of na- 
tive cultivation. 

ORANGES. 

Mexico could produce more oranges than 
California and Florida combined, and of better 
quality, with the same high grade of cultivation 
bestowed on this fruit in those States, much 
<}heaper, as no fertilizers are needed in Mexico, 
where no damage from frost ever occurs. 

Florida is practically ruined by cold waves. 
California has lost a heavy per cent of three crops 
in five from the same cause; and it is merely a 
question of some years when her trees will meet 
the same fate those of Florida suffered. Then 
Mexico will be the orange belt of the continent. 

Mexican oranges have never been cultivated. 
The trees are all seedlings, mostly volunteers, 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 33 

growing where they came up, without pruning or 
attention; yet the fruit is sweet and juicy, equal 
to the best Florida and better than California. 

Some hundreds of carloads of Mexican oranges 
have been shipped to the markets of the United 
States from each crop of the past three or four 
years, and found much favor with dealers and con- 
sumers, the drawbacks stated above, and imper- 
fect or bad methods of transportation notwith- 
standing. 

When the orange in Mexico is once budded with 
the best varieties and cultivated, the same as it 
is treated in Florida and California, and the trans- 
portation becomes as good as it is in the United 
States, the industry will be established to stay, not 
only in Mexico but in the markets of the United 
States. There are Floridians and Californians in 
Mexico, putting out big groves, so that it is a 
question of but few years when all the trees now 
in Mexico will be budded and cultivated, and mil- 
lions of new ones planted. Then Mexico will be 
the orange country of the world. High duty will 
not keep her fine, sweet fruit out of the United 
States. 

The coast zone and coffee belt of the Vera 
Cruz district has ten times more good orange land 
than the entire State of Florida ever had, with 
bearing trees in every community sufficient to 
produce five hundred carloads; though not much 
more than a hundred cars have ever been shipped 
to the United States in one season. The possibil- 
itv of cheap, quick water transportation from the 
Mexican Gulf ports to New Orleans and Mobile, 
Mexico— 3 



34 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

and thence by fast fruit express trains, now in 
vogue for banana service, to Western and Cana- 
dian markets, renders the Vera Cruz belt the most 
promising orange section of Mexico. 

The States of Jalisco and Sonora are now far 
■in the lead of all other sections of Mexico in the 
production and shipment of oranges; but their 
geographical positions preclude them from the 
possibility of cheap water freight, that is a cer- 
tainty from the Gulf ports of Vera Cruz and Ta- 
basco, when there is business to support fast 
steamers. As Americans are going by hundreds 
into that district there will soon be business to 
justify the steamers to run direct and under high 
speed. There are now two lines of coasting 
steamers between Mexican Gulf ports and New 
Orleans and Mobile, ready to put on fast, direct 
service as soon as needed. 

Oranges can be produced in Mexico at half the 
cost in Florida and California, with no crops lost 
as the result of frost. 

LEMONS AND LIMES. 

Lemons and limes grow wild in all the orange 
belt of Mexico and have never been cultivated, but 
as fine fruit can be grown there as any in the 
world, and very cheaply. 

BAXAXAS. 

Bananas grow wherever there is coffee, and any- 
where below the coffee zone. The low coast coun- 



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36 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

try alone would produce fruit that would be prof- 
itable to export. From the sea level to seven 
hundred feet above immense banana plantations 
may be established at a cost of about five cents a 
plant. At the end of a year the plants bear each 
a bunch of fruit, worth from fifty cents to one dol- 
lar, gold, in the United States. The second year, 
and many years after, the yield doubles without 
replanting, as suckers come from the original 
plant. After the first year there is little expense 
beyond gathering the fruit; and the first crop 
makes a profit above ^11 the expenses of planting 
and caring for the young plants. 

There are three fields more desirable than oth- 
ers equally productive in the same section, be- 
cause they are on the banks of rivers near the 
Gulf. The port and central point of the first is 
the city of Tlacotalpam, in the State of Vera 
Cruz, on the river San Juan, at a point where 
three rivers unite. The city has some fifteen 
thousand inhabitants, and some factories. Vera 
Cruz is the port proper, but New York steamers 
go there regularly for cargoes. 

The banks of each of the three rivers that unite 
there are as fine fields for bananas as any in Cen- 
tral America, and the quality of the fruit that 
grows there now, without attention, is good as the 
best elsewhere. The Havana market has been 
supplied with plantain or bread fruit from there 
since the war in Cuba has been raging. There is 
land enough for thousands of planters. 

The central of the three rivers leads up into as 
fine a water melon section as any in the United 
States. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 37 

Another river empties into the Gulf at the port 
of Coatzacoalcos, that has fine banks for banana 
plantations, and yet another at the port of Front- 
era, where the cultivation has been started sys- 
tematically but on. a small scale, as yet, by one 
man. 

liand of no better quality would cost ten times 
as much in Central America as in Mexico, hence 
the capital to start could be much less and the net 
profit correspondingly larger than in Central 
America, $100 gold invested in plants, land nec- 
essary to set them and labor to bring them to bear- 
ing, should produce $500 gold the first year, and 
from $700 to $1,000 each subsequent year, for 
nine or ten years. The cost per year, after the 
first year, would not exceed $25. 

The finest quality of large yellow bananas 
should be planted, such as grow in Central Amer- . 
ica, and can be found at Frontera. Most of the 
bananas now grown in Mexico are not of quality 
suitable to export. 

Cultivation of bananas for export would quickly 
assure steamer service suitable to carry oranges, 
which also grow finely and ripen early in the ba- 
nana sections. 

PINEAPPLES. 

The finest pineapples in the world grow in the 
same districts or sections last mentioned as 
adapted to bananas, and there is practically no 
limit to the possibilities of production. Suckers ' 
are planted and produce fruit in a year; and it 
comes again from the root, year after year, with- 



38 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

out repknting, the same as the banana. Three 
thousand five hundred to four thousand may 1)e 
planted to the acre. After the land is cleared and 
planted very little cultivation is required. At five 
cents each the profit would be very large. 

The safest business and biggest possible profit 
would be in canning that fine pineapple in a ripe 
state, which would drive all the green, trashy 
canned pineapples out of the markets of the world. 
Tn this way none would be lost in transit. The 
first half of the crop could be marketed in a fresh 
state more profitably than canned, but not the last 
half, after the rainy season sets in. 



Vv 



OCOANUTS. 



There is nothing to do but gather, hull, and 
sack cocoanuts, whicli grow mid everywhere, in 
the banana sections, even in sea marshes. 

OTHER FRUITS. 

The finest mangoes and alligator pears also 
grow in banana sections, as well as many other 
small fruits, entirely unknown in the United 
States, tliough unimportant beyond home use, as 
not suitable to export. 

g^ . COFFEE. 

-''All books and guides sliow the profit of coffee 
growing to be from 100 per cent to 300 per cent, 
on capital invested; but the decline of 1897 wiped 



GUIDE TO 31 E XI CO, 39 

all that golden harvest from the industry, and 
hrought coffee production down to the lowest hard 
pan of any business in Mexico. 

There is yet a modest profit to be gleaned from 
existing coffee plantations, at present low prices, 
hut no sort of tempting inducements to start new 
ones. There seems to be little prospect of high' 
prices again soon, though Mexican coffee is worth 
more than that of other countries. 

Mexico took the highest award from all the 
world with her coffee at the Centennial Exposi- 
tion, at Philadelphia, in 1876, and yet deserves to 
hold it. 

Under existing circumstances it seems superflu- 
ous to dwell on the culture of coffee, as an induce- 
ment to emigrate to Mexico. 

Since the above was written coffee has ad- 
vanced, and is now profitable; and the govern- 
ment has abolished the export duty. 

VANILLA. 

The Spaniards found the Aztecs flavoring their 
chocolate with the vanilla bean, which is a native 
of Mexico. It grows from the coast up to an alti- 
tude of 2,500 feet. Three years are required to 
get the first crop, worth $50 to the acre, after a 
■cost of $30, leaving $20 profit. After the first 
crop the vield is $60 per acre and the expenses 
<$10, leaving $50 clear. 



40 GVIDE TO MEXICO. 



CHOCOLATE. 

The chocolate bean grows on a tree that re- 
quires fiye years to produce fruit, and needs some 
shade, in moist soil, while young. It is a native 
of Mexico, and bears fruit some thirty years. It 
does not pay in an altitude above 2,000 feet, as it 
requires a hot climate. The district of Vera Cruz 
suits it better than any other, though it does well 
in some others. It produces about $200 per acre. 

The quality of Mexican chocolate is equal to 
that of any other country. 

EUBBEE. 

Rubber trees grow wild along the coast of Vera 
Cruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche, 
and as far as seventy-five miles inland^ in some 
places. Such trees are beginning to die out from 
the effect of frequent tapping, which is leading 
many persons to start plantations. The rubber 
tree makes a good shade for coffee or chocolate 
trees, while these are young and delicate, though 
it is not of much service to coff'ee, as it does not 
thrive at an altitude above 400 feet. It grows 50 
feet in height and 10 inches in diameter, and must 
have a warm; moist climate. It is propagated from 
its own nuts and grows with little care. From 250 
to 500 trees are planted to the acre, as to the fer- 
tility of the soil. Six or seven years are necessary 
to get the first crop, but is then productive some- 
times for fifty years, or an average of thirty-five 
vears. 



GVIDE TO MEXICO. 41 

Eubber is a very profitable crop, and there 
seems no limit to the demand, as the price is ever 
advancing. Brazil exports more than a hundred 
million dollars' worth in gold, annually. There is 
some fifty million dollars invested in jjicycle tires 
in the United States alone. There are one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand miles of submarine cables 
insulated with rubber. It has some hundred other 
uses, ever increasing the consumption. 

A milky substance exudes from the tapping of 
the tree, which is coagulated into crude rubber, by 
simple and inexpensive processes. A tree yields 
two to three pounds of crude rubber, now w^orth 
more than seventy cents per pound in gold. The 
land, clearing, planting and cultivating to the first 
crop will cost about twenty-five dollars per acre. 
Two hundred and fifty trees, with one pound of 
crude rubber each, at seventy cents, would make 
one hundred and seventy-five dollars gold per acre, 
leaving one hundred and fifty dollars profit. Ten 
acres would leave fifteen hundred dollars, a re- 
spectable showing for a poor man, who should be 
making a living and some money from other crops^ 
while his rubber trees are growing. 

But the second year of production his ten acres 
would yield him three thousand dollars, and not 
less per annum thereafter, in his lifetime, but 
some twenty-five per cent and a little upward 
more after the trees are ten years old. 

Since the above was written the price of rubber 
has materially advanced, so average production 
might now reach or exceed $700 per acre. 



42 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



WOODS. 

■There are more than sixty varieties of woods 
suitable for ordinary building purposes, and more 
than fifty for tine furniture and finishings in the 
forests of Mexico. There are grand openings in 
wood industries. The finest furniture and dye 
woods are in the coast belt of the Vera Cruz dis- 
trict: and the State of Vera Cruz contains all the 
ordinary building woods. 

More than three million dollars' (gold) worth of 
dye woods alone are exported from Mexico an- 
nually. 

The finest ebony, rosewood and violet wood are 
in Mexico, and not appreciated properly, because 
not extensively used. 

The lands one would clear, in some parts of the 
coast country, would contain valuable woods. 

FIBRES. 

Fibre plants, such as sisal hemp, called hene- 
quen, jute, ramie, flax, and others unknown by 
name, in the United States, grow everywhere in 
Mexico in great profusion. Millions of dollars' 
worth are annually exported, though there is lit- 
tle systematic cultivation. 

CATTLE INDUSTRY. 

With improved breeds and more care, tliere are 
unlimited chances to make fortunes in the cattle 
business of ^[exico, and a certainty of prosperity 
for any one able to start on a modest scale. In the 



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44 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

right sections, where pasture is good and water is 
abundant all the year, it is nearly all profit, after 
the start. The coast and coffee belts of Vera Cruz 
district, and the State of Jalisco, are probably the 
best fields for men of moderate means. 

A new era is dawning for the cattle industry of 
Mexico, as the Government is arranging a fran- 
chise to a big American company, whose business 
will be to facilitate the improvement and breed- 
ing of cattle, and the canning and preparation of 
carcasses for export to Europe — that is, dressed 
beef fresh in whole carcasses, as well as canned. 
The consumption is constantly increasing in Mex- 
ico, while the export trade goes on to the United 
States, in the face of high duty, and to Cuba, as 
it must continue a long time, even after the war 
is over, as the stock of cattle in Cuba will be ex- 
hausted. 

All these things will stimulate the cattle busi- 
ness of Mexico, and render it more profitable. 
It will cost about the same to raise an ox that 
weighs fifteen hundred as one that weighs no 
more than six hundred pounds, when breeds are 
once improved. There is no probability that 
there will ever be a surplus sufficient to lower 
prices. 

HOG BREEDING. 

There is more promise in the pork business than 
almost any other in Mexico, as the supply never 
equals the demand, and prices are always high. 
As a special business, on a large scale, or by the 
small farmer, in connection with other crops. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 45 

there is money in the hog. Lard pays more than 
meat, and native brings much more money than 
imported. The parts of the hog that cannot be 
turned into lard is used as fresh pork. Very little 
bacon is made in Mexico, and not much used by 
the natives. Hams are used more than other 
smoked parts of the hog. . 

Bananas could be utilized for raising and fat- 
tening hogs, as no other food is better, and none 
can be produced as cheaply as that in the coffee 
belt, where bananas are grown to shade coffee, and 
have no value, as they are not suitable to export. 

THE DAIRY. 

There are great inducements in the dairy in- 
dustry, as nearly all the cheese and butter used are 
imported. What little produced is the business 
of foreigners, chiefly from imported cows. Con- 
sumers pay forty cents to seventy-five cents per 
nound for cheese, and fifty cents to one dollar for 
fresh butter, with no supply to equal the demand. 
As a matter of course, this industry would have to 
be in reach of a city. 

Dairy and hog industries would work well to- 
gether. 

POULTRY AND EGGS. 

The poultry- and egg industry will pay twice as 
much anywhere in Mexico as it pays in the LTnited 
States. The crude methods of the natives, on 
small scales, is the way the business is done. 



46 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

FISH. 

The Gulf coast and the rivers that empty into 
the Gulf swarm with fine salt w^ater fish, but few 
of which have any market value, for want of near- 
by consumers and suitable transportation to carry 
them to the inland cities. Families have all they 
want, with very little trouble of catching them. 
There are some small oysters along the coast that 
have a very fine flavor. The Pacific Coast has its- 
fish and oysters, but is not accessible and practi- 
cal for American settlers. 

COAST ADVAjSTTAGES. 

Excepting wheat, barley, oats and cold country 
fruits the settler has all the multifarious crops- 
and resources of ]\Iexico concentrated in the coast 
and cotfee l)elts of the Vera Cruz district, with 
cheap water freight for his export products, and 
the machinery or other goods he may wish to im- 
port. 

These are advantages that cannot be estimated^ 
and that do not exist in any other country. 

From one hundred dollars to two hundred and 
fifty dollars, Mexican silver, will build a house 
that will do for a home at the start in that warm 
country. Clothinof costs very little, as light, cheap 
material is sntlicient nearly all the year round. 

The same energy and labor expended on the 
crops of tlie Ignited States would ]iroduee i^n 
times more results in ^lexico, where such a di- 
versity of profitable crops may be grown on the 
same small farm or large plantation. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 47 



FARM STOCK. 

Horses are worth ten dollars to fifty dollars; 
work mules twenty-five dollars to seventy-five 
dollars; work oxen forty dollars to seventy-five 
dollars per yoke of two; bnrros, the great pack 
animals of Mexico, from five dollars to fifteen dol- 
lars, and milch cows from ten dollars to twenty- 
five each, in silver. There is no standard price for 
stock hogs nor stock fowls, but they may be 
bought at reasonable prices, compared with their 
market value when ready to market. 

Farming tools and machinery are mostly super- 
fluous, as there is very little cultivation of crops, 
more than cutting down the grass and weeds. 

It would be a good plan, when families are go- 
ing by steamers, to take a couple pair of pigs of 
good breed, as most of the hogs in Mexico are of 
the old razorback breed. 

CLEAEING LAND. 

The cost of clearing land, ready for crops, will 
range from five dollars to ten dollars per acre, sil- 
ver, according to locality and timber. The natives 
do such work by the job for less money than the 
usual cost of day labor, as they thus have a show 
to earn more than current wages in a day, by rush- 
ing and long hours. 

FUENITUEE. 

Families going by steamer would do well to 
carry the more necessary articles of household 



48 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

furnitiTre, where the distance by rail to the 
steamer is not too great and the freight near half 
the value of the goods. All rail it would not pay 
to carry anything that could not be packed in 
trunks, unless shipped as freight, which would be 
very long on the road. This would be better than 
buying in Mexico. 

Most of the furniture sold in Mexico is im- 
ported and sold at very high prices. Furniture 
taken to Mexico by families emigrating there to 
make homes, and carried for their own use, is ad- 
mitted free of duty by the government. The 
freight, when not carried as baggage, in excess of 
the weight allowed by transportation companies, 
would not be one quarter of the cost of new fur- 
niture in Mexico. 

Books will also be admitted free of duty, when 
a part of family effects, as well as pianos or other 
musical instruments. 

When household goods are shipped by freight, 
and do not accompany the owners, a certificate of 
the head of the family, made before a notary pub- 
lic, that he or she, head of a family, is emigrating 
with family to make a home in Mexico, and that 
goods shipped is family property, necessary for 
housekeeping of said family and not for sale. 
This certificate, with a letter from the railroad 
agent shipping the goods, stating that the certifi- 
cate represents the facts, should be mailed to the 
Mexican collector of customs at the point where 
the goods would cross the border, if all rail: viz., 
Ciudad Juarez, if by El Paso route: Ciudad Diaz, 
if by Eagle Pass route; and Laredo Nuevo, if by 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 49 

Laredo route; or to Vera Cruz, Tampico, or what- 
■ever port of entry, if by steamer. 

The fact that the goods are family effects, of 
•emigrants seeking homes in Mexico, should be 
noted on the bill of lading and the way bill, issued 
and made by the agent shipping the property. 

A perfect invoice should be made by the owner, 
and the boxes numbered, should there be boxes, 
and number of each box placed at the head of the 
items of its contents in the invoice; and the sec- 
ond-hand value of each item in the invoice should 
be entered opposite it. This invoice should be ab- 
solutely correct, and so certified by the owner, 
before the notary public, and be sent with other 
documents named, in one enclosure, to the Mexi- 
can collector of customs, as already explained, 
while a copy of said invoice should be attached to 
the way bill, with a request from the shipping 
agent, to the American agent at the border, to ask 
the Mexican agent and the collector to forward 
the goods to destination without delay. 

A false invoice subjects the shipment to seizure 
and confiscation, or makes it liable to a heavy 
duty, according to circumstances. 

No passport is needed to land in Mexico, and 
none to travel after landing in the country. 

Americans cannot be supposed to know such lit- 
tle, yet very important, requisites, that might 
cause them much annoyance and great inconve- 
nience, if learned after setting out or omitted al- 
together. 

Furniture, or any class of goods, 'is allowed as 
baggage, to a liberal weight, to every ticket- 

Mexico— 4 



50 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

holder on the railways leading out from Vera 
Cruz. In this way the poor Mexicans take their 
fruit, eggs and other small articles to market^ 
freight-free, paying only second-class fare for 
themselves. 

COMMON LABOR. 

Farm and railroad hands had hetter not go to 
Mexico to work for wages. There are plenty of 
peons for all classes of cheap labor; and Ameri- 
cans could not get half the current price of com- 
mon labor in the United States. If an American 
cannot start a little home, and work for his own 
account, as a common laborer, he had better not 
leave his own country. 

The day may come when the supply of native 
labor will be less than the demand, but that day 
does not seem to be very near just now. 

STEXOGEAPHY. 

There is a grand opening for stenographers in 
Mexico, able to take dictations and write in Span- 
ish. But there are plenty there who know noth- 
ing but English. American railway otlicials and 
American and English companies, who have large 
correspondence and shipping trade with the 
United States and England, use stenographers 
who know no Spanish. There are very few ste- 
nographers and typewriters who know Spanish. 
Mexican girls are not taught, and would not be al- 
lowed by their parents and social usage to take 
positions if they could write shorthand and use 



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52 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

the typewriter. Americans who go to Mexico with 
40 knowledge of Spanish never learn there, 
though they often have the best possible opportu- 
nities. One in a hundred may learn. They herd 
with Americans or Mexicans who speak English. 
If a Mexican knows- just a little English he will 
not talk to an American in Spanish. 

■ Mexicans know the value of English, and learn 
it much oftener then Americans learn Spanish, 
thouoh the task is ten times as hard for them as 
that for an American to learn Spanish. 

; One must be fairly master or mistress of Span- 
ish to become a stenographer and typewriter in 
that language. Considerable study and practice 
are necessary to attain such mastery of the lan- 
guage. But the reward would compensate the la- 
bor. Without such qualification it would be need- 
less to seek employment as a stenographer in Mex- 
ico. Certainly there are many now filling posi- 
tions, as stated, without knowledge of Spanish; 
but there are more applicants of this class than 
places for them. 

• ^BOOKKEEPERS. 

" There is room for good bookkeepers who know 
Spanish. Less proficiency in the language would 
be required at the start of a bookkeeper than of a 
stenographer, though he must have • commercial 
words and terms at liis fingers' ends. Mexican law 
requires that all books of account shall be kept in 
Spanish. There are plenty of ^fexican bookkeep- 
ers, though few of them know Enoflish. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 53 

Germans all learn the Spanish quickly, and 
hence take the best positions in the competitive 
race with Americans, who do not even try to 
learn. Germans then become partners or proprie- 
tors, or go into business for themselves, elsewhere, 
very soon. No German remains poor in Mexico. 

Americans without capital are as smart as poor 
Germans, but too proud, independent, indolent in 
their poverty. The German could never be any- 
thing more than a peon if he remained ignorant 
of the language of the country. But he learns 
Spanish, and makes it his capital, just as any poor 
American of education and fair average business 
capacity might do. Germans are all educated, or, 
at least, those in Mexico. 

MINOR POSITIONS. 

Clerks, salesmen and salesladies, and general 
■utility men, somewhat familiar with Spanish, 
might find employment with the railroads, mines, 
factories and stores of the country. An army of 
persons are thus employed in all sections of the 
Republic, many of whom speak no Spanish, 
though, in many cases, persons who speak both 
Spanish and English are far more desirable, and 
would be paid more salary than those who know 
but one language. The demand for such help is 
constantly increasing with the development of 
new enterprises and the enlargement of old ones. 
The volume of all classes of business and indus- 
tries is steadily growing, as population and pros- 
perity augment .their inspiring influence. 



54 GLIDE TO MEXICO. 

It is not reasonable that more people will be- 
come qualified for such employment in the United 
States faster than there will be places ready for 
them to fill in Mexico. 

The knowledge of Spanish being the key to suc- 
cess in any business or position in Mexico, it is, 
or would be, just as reasonable for one who is ig- 
norant of shorthand to seek a position as a ste- 
nographer as for one without a knowlege of Span- 
ish to apply for skilled employment in Mexico. 

This is why there are always so many disap- 
pointed and disgusted Americans in Mexico City, 
virtually living on their wits, or such of their 
newly arrived countrymen as they can manipulate. 
Adventurers fare no better, after they are once 
known, in Mexico than on the frontier in the 
United States. They have done the honest, indus- 
trious American, whose lot was cast in Mexico 
without money, much detriment in the past. But 
now Mexicans understand them, and are able to 
discriminate between them and those of sterling 
worth to tlie country. Workers in the vineyard, 
not drones, have a warm welcome awaiting them 
at all times and in all parts of Mexico. 

HOW TO GET POSITIONS. 

The cheapest method of securing positions in 
Mexico would be to advertise in the want columns 
of "The Mexican Herald," an English paper, and 
"El linivcrsal," a Spanish jiaper, publislied in 
Mexico City, daily. Nearly all business and manu- 
facturing people in the Eei)ublic.read one or the 



aUIDE TO MEXICO. 55 

other. The rates are very moderate, in silver — 
one dollar in gold would get several insertions of 
an ordinary want advertisement. Other prelim- 
inaries and details could be arranged by mail. Be 
sure you are qualified for the place you seek, and 
you will be almost certain to get answers that will 
lead to an engagement. There are plenty of both 
English speaking and Spanish speaking people 
who want first-class help that can use both lan- 
guages. They will soon become interested when 
they see persons in the United States are offering 
their services in Mexico. 

Persons well qualified could safely go to any 
large city at this time certain to find employment, 
if not at once, surely in a little season. But a bet- 
ter price might be secured from home, in the 
United States, at much less expense, and without 
annoyance or delay after reaching Mexico. It 
would be ever so much nicer to start direct to a 
good position than to go blindly to seek one. 

BUSINESS ENTEEPEISES. 

With some capital, and practical methods, there 
is room for a good business man almost anywhere 
in Mexico, and in almost any line of trade knowl- 
edge of the language would make success certain. 

There are good points for a small business, where 
a large one would not be practical. At many 
points, as in the Vera Cruz district, one could en- 
gage in the sale of merchandise and the exporta- 
tion of the products of the country, at the same 
time, which would work beautifully together and 



56 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

help the merchandise feature wonderfully. Other 
places have articles of various classes that might 
be exported or sold in markets of the Republic^ 
where merchandising would be feasible. 

Before engaging in any mercantile enterprise 
one should go and study the situation carefully^ 
first deciding what district would be most desir- 
able. It might be well to visit several places, to 
find the most promising one. 

There are grand openings for several classes of 
commission business in Mexico Cit}^, but time and 
patience would be required to make them profit- 
able. Present methods of business would have to 
be revolutionized, which would go slower than 
changes are made in the United States. There 
are no large distributing depots for native and 
foreign produce. The primitive methods of age& 
are still in vogue. Small, filthy, badly-ventilated 
little dives contain all the fruit and other native 
and foreign produce, which Indian peddlers carry 
around the streets on their heads all day, in sun 
or rain, and sell at prices much higher than Amer- 
ican methods of business would require. Such 
peddlers gain little if any more than peon wages, 
and the dealers do not ^q\ rich, for the reason that 
their stock goes fearfully to waste, the bulk of 
which should be condemned by the board of 
health, and would be but for the fact that there 
is nothing better, before it is sent out to sell. 
Nearly all the fruit and produce of the Republic 
arrives at ^lexico City in bad shape, owing to bar- 
barous gathering and handling. 

Three quarters of the Republic grows no tropi- 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 57 

cal fruit. Mexico City is the natural distributing 
point for all such territory, where an immense 
trade could be built up, by having practical con- 
nections at each interior point, that may be 
reached by rail, many of which would become sub- 
distributing points for back country towns and 
settlements. 

Nearly all the State of Texas may be made trib- 
utary to Mexico City by direct and quick rail con- 
nections; and much business is now done with 
Texas under the present suicidal methods. 

The consumption would be enormous in Mexico 
City were the perishable goods handled the same 
as they are in the United States. 

The fruit can be brought from the coast to Mex- 
ico City in j)erfect shape, and then delivered to 
any point in the Republic or Texas in better con- 
dition than most of the tropical fruits reach in- 
terior markets of the United States. 

The high, dry, cool air of Mexico City and the 
interior tableland country is almost equal to re- 
frigeration in hot weather in the United States 
for the preservation of fruit and vegetables. 

There is an equal opportunity to monopolize the 
fish and oyster business, which might be done by 
the same combination necessary to make, the fruit 
and vegetable trade profitable in a high degree. 
The coast of Vera Cruz and Tampico now supply 
all the fresh fish and some of the oysters used in 
Mexico City and the interior tableland country. 
The methods are antiquated and the prices the 
same. There are tine large oysters in great abun- 
dance near Tampico. 



58 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

There would he a quick fortune in the business 
at half present prices. 

A big trade could be built up in California 
fruits, after the season for Mexican fruits of the 
same classes is over, by bringing them in carloads, 
by freight, to Mexico City, and there distributing 
them all over the country, even to Vera Cruz and 
the coast. Many such fruits are now brought all 
the way by express at an enormous freight, and 
all sold at famine prices. 

There is some little trade in American apples 
and potatoes, which might be largely increased. 

The business might be made reciprocal and 
grand. Country connections could sell all classes 
of goods and buy local produce, suited to ship to 
the market of Mexico City or to the United 
States, according to circumstances. Mexico City 
is now the principal distributing point for general 
merchandise, mostly in the h.'inds of German, 
French and Spanish merchants, in whose business 
fields Americans might cut broad swaths. 

Vera Cruz is the natural distributing point for 
much of the coffee bell and coast country; and 
there are large, rich houses there now, but doing 
business under much the same methods as Mexico 
City, with the same show for American vim and 
enterprise. The Mexican government is spending 
twenty-five million dollars making a deep, secure 
harbor at Vera Cruz, which will enhance her com- 
mercial importance beyond the power of words to 
estimate. It will i^rohably be finished this year. 

The same company that is building the harbor 
of Vera Cruz has just completed the great canal 



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60 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

for the clrainaoje of the A'alley of Mexico, at a cost 
of more than twenty million dollars to the Mexi- 
can government. 

MAXUFACTURIXG IXDUSTEIES. 

There is no practical limit to the possibilities of 
factory industry, large or small, in almost any 
branch and nearly everywhere. 

There are more cotton and woolen mills than 
any other class of factories; and twice the number 
of looms and spindles could run all the year round 
profitably. 

All the hides and pelts of the Eepublic might 
be tanned and made up into goods at a profit. 

There is room for foundries, large and small, 
as demonstrated by the enormous works at Mon- 
terey. 

There is room for every industry in wood. jMon- 
terey has a furniture factory that is coining 
money. 

Vera Cruz is probably the best place for iron- 
works, because of llie cheap freight on pig iron 
and coal, and water routes to distribute much of 
the products of such industries to the coast coun- 
try and the interior points, reached by river. 
Even Mexico City could be reached cheaper than 
from ]\Ionterey or other border point. 

Tampico might be a better point than Vera 
Cruz for a very large part of the Republic for. 
iron-workinsf inrlustries, as freight would be 
cheaper and (piickor than from Vera Cruz. 

There would certainly be much more economy 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 61 

in working up material on the coast and shipping 
the product to tlie interior than paying freight on 
material and coal to the interior, and then distrib- 
ute the product at about the same rate of freight 
as would have to be paid from the coast. 

Orizaba, in the State of Vera Cruz, or along the 
river between there and the low country, would 
be a magnificent field for woodworking factories, 
not only owing to the close proximity of fine 
woods, but also on account of splendid water 
power, sufficient to run a hundred factories, as 
the falls are frequent and stupendous. 

The cost of transportation of lumber from the 
coast to Orizaba would be nothing compared to 
the advantages of water power. 

There are grand openings for sugar refineries 
on a large scale, wherever cane grows in paying 
quantities. 

Fruit canning and preserving have great possi- 
bilities, and wine making could be made very 
profitable, as there is much material, including 
oranges that might be utilized for wine. 

Canned fruit and preserves could be exported to 
Germany and other foreign countries in large 
quantities, while home consumption would require 
a large supply. 

Papermills that could produce tissue paper, 
suitable for fruit packers, and good writing pa- 
per, would do well. 

There are other industries, including fine grades 
of glass, that could be made profitable. Common 
grades of glass and glassware are cheap, there be- 
ing several factories in the country. 



62 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



IMPORTAXT CITIES. 

The limits of this guide will not admit an elabo- 
rate sketch of all the interesting little places in 
Mexico. The leading central points will suffice 
for all practical purposes. 

It will probably be more satisfactory to any one 
wishing to visit the country, either for business or 
pleasure, to have such places presented systemati- 
cally, according to the line of transportation by 
which they must be reached. 

Assuming that this hypothesis is correct, the 
Mexican Central line will be the first introduced. 

The Mexican Central Eailway passes through 
long stretches of dreary waste and awful, desolate 
grandeur — valleys of pulverized alkali and barren 
mountains of cinders and ashes, as if the remains 
of a world destroyed by fire. 

The main line, from El Paso, Texas, to Mexico 
City, is twelve hundred and fifty miles long, and 
this line and its several' branches reach the most 
important centers of the I?epublic. 

CHIHUAHUA. 

This is the capitol city of the State of the same 
name, and the first place of commercial and manu- 
facturing importance. Ciudad Juarez, just across 
the Rio Grande from El Paso, is the starting point 
of the Mexican Central Railway, and the site of 
the ^Mexican Custom House, but otherwise of no 
great. importance to Americans as yet. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 63 

Chihuahua is styled "The American City," be- 
cause quite a number of people from the United 
States are doing a prosperous business there. It is 
a great stockraising and mineral center. It is the 
tragic scene, the stage, where Hidalgo, the father 
of Mexican Independence, was executed by the 
Spaniards, July 30, 1811. The cathedral, the 
swimming baths, the chapel of Guadalupe, two 
causeways, and an aqueduct, the latter built more 
than two hundred years ago, are places of interest 
to the stranger. 

Chihuahua boasts two smelters, a big iron foun- 
dry, a cottonseed oil mill, a soap factory, and a. 
brewery, and room for other enterprises. 

SANTA EOS ALIA. 

Here are the hot springs, said to excel any in 
the United States, and sure to cure inflammatory 
rheumatism, and all blood and skin diseases.. 
Otherwise the place is unimportant. 

JIMENEZ. 

This is the shipping point for the rich silver 
mines of the Parral and Gtianacevi districts, with 
which Jimenez is connected by daily stage lines.. 
Jimenez has some ten thousand inhabitants. 

ESCALON. 

This is a small place, but the junction of the' 
Mexican Northern Railway, running seventy-eight 



64 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

miles east to the great mining district of Sierra 
Mojada, said to be the largest carbonate camps in 
the world. 

LERDO. 

This beautiful little city of some twelve thou- 
sand inhabitants nestles in a district similar to the 
valley of the Nile. Eain rarely ever falls. The 
country is irrigated by large canals, watered from 
the river Nazas, which overflows twice a year. 
The section is called the ^'Lagiina'^ country, and 
produces the finest cotton in the Republic, planted 
once in seven years. Grapes and other fruits, 
equal in flavor and quality to the same produc- 
tions of California, grow in this magic vale, i^at- 
urally these irrigated lands are not cheap, and 
those beyond the margin of the valley will not 
produce one blade of grass. 

ZACATECAS. 

This is a city of more than ninety thousand in- 
habitants, and the capitol of the State of the same 
name. It is the celebrated silver center of Mexico, 
discovered in September, 1546. In 1818 the out- 
put of silver had been nearly six hundred and sev- 
enty million dollars. The mines have since pro- 
duced, and are still yielding, immense quantities 
of ore, and late discoveries promise to make Zaca- 
tecas famous as a gold producing point. 

The mint is a wonder and a show. There are 
other beautiful public buildings and parks, called 
alamedas and plazas in Spanish. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 65 

Tram cars run out to the splendid cathedral of 
Guadalupe, which contains some paintings and 
frescoes of surprising beauty, said to be emblems 
of supernatural production. But Guadalupe and 
her wondrous influence in Mexico will be pre- 
sented more fittingly in a special feature as a pecu- 
liar institution of Mexican, character. 

The road passes directly over some of the mines, 
and the train affords a magnificent view of the 
city, just as it winds around the mountain side to 
plunge down into the cultivated valley below. 

AGUAS CALIENTES. 

This is a city of probably fifty thousand inhabi- 
tants, famous for its hot springs, attractive bath 
houses, and healthy climate. The feast of San 
Marcos, one of the most celebrated and largely at- 
tended fairs in the Eepublic, is annually held at 
Aguas Calientes in the month of April, when 
thousands of people from all over Mexico throng 
the streets and parks of this old and beautiful 
city. Here the beautiful needle drawnwork is 
made and brought to the trains for sale at very 
low prices. One of the largest silver-copper smelt- 
ing plants in the world is nearing completion here. 
This is also the greatest chicken and egg center in 
the Republic. 

Aguas Calientes is also the junction of the 
Tampico branch of the Mexican Central Railway, 
which may be sketched now as well as later. This 
branch passes through Salinas, important only on 
account of its famous salt works. 

Mexico— 5 



66 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

SAX LUIS POTOSI. 

This is a city of eighty thousand or ninety thou- 
sand inhabitants, on the Tampico brancn, and the 
capitol of the State of the same name. It is one 
of the most important business centers in Mexico, 
the principal distributing point for much of the 
northern part of the Eepublic. It is situated in a 
fertile valley surrounded by mountains teeming 
with mineral wealth. This city possesses the most 
extensive silver-lead reduction works on the 
American continent, and has inviting room for 
many diversified industries and business enter- 
prises. 

The views between San Luis Potosi and Tam- 
pico almost rival those of Switzerland. San Luis 
Potosi is six thousand one hundred and eighteen 
feet above sea level. The plain gradually slopes, 
by series of terraces cut through ever and anon 
by canons, for passage of watercourses descending 
from the tableland to the Mexican Gulf. The 
train rapidly glides down through one of these 
openings into the wild Ysidro Valley, beneath 
the sombre shadows of dark green mountains, 
whose sides are draped with the lugubrious foliage 
of dense forests. Farther on the train descends 
abruptly into the charming valley of Canoas, and 
thence plunges into the grand canon of Tamasopo. 
Through a succession of curves and tunnel the 
train ^\nnds its serpentine course along shelves 
hewn in, the sides of almost perpendicular cliffs, 
and finally reaches the mouth of the canon, where 
a magnificent view unfolds. Far beneath spreads 



^8 GVIDE TO MEXICO. 

a smiling valley in an emerald circle of towering 
mountains. Down below twelve hundred feet ap- 
pears, in seeming ripples of undulating waves, like 
a sheet of old ocean lashed into foaming green, a 
luxuriant tropical forest, studded here and there 
with cane fields and groves of tropical fruit. At 
many points along the route water plunges over 
headlong precipices three hundred feet, and the 
train crosses water two hundred feet below. 

TAMPICO. 

This is a very old town, and now has possibly 
twenty thousand inhabitants. It is on the Panuco 
river, seven miles from the mouth, and is a port 
of entry of growing importance. Large ocean 
steamers come up to the dock and discharge cor- 
goes and passengers, without lighterage or trans- 
fer. Eegular lines run to Mobile, Xew York and 
Europe, as well as Havana. It is the only inland 
port on the gulf of Mexico along the Mexican 
coast. 

Emigrants from the eastern and southern 
States should take steamer to Tampico, if going 
to ^Tonterey, or any point on the Mexican Central 
Eailway or its branches, not farther north than 
Zacatecas, if economy is a question worthy of con- 
sideration. 

There are fine vegetable and fruit lands up, the 
river from Tampico, but not always exempt from 
frost; It is expected tbat Tampico will ship one 
hundred carloads of tomatoes to the United States 
ihig year, 1808. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 69 

There is a sort of inside rowboat route from 
Tampieo to Tiixpan, the region of wild monkeys 
and parrots, a genuine tropical country, in the 
State of Vera Cruz, and a gulf port; but it is time 
to return to the main line. 



LAGOS. 

This is the first place of note, south of Aguas 
Calientes, on the main line, a fine manufacturing 
city of about forty-five thousand inhabitants, with 
room for new industries and enterprises. 



LEON. 

This is a city of some one hundred and ten 
thousand inhabitants, a great manufacturing cen- 
ter, in a valley of extreme fertility of soil. One 
industry is the manufacture of beautiful, soft 
leather clothing, tastefully embroidered m gold 
and silver bullion, worn by wealthy people on 
their estates, but going out of date in the cities be- 
fore the inexorable march of developing progress. 



SILAO. 

This is a rather pretty little city, and important 
as the headquarters of the Mexican division of the 
railway, and the junction of the fifteen-mile 
branch to Guanajuato. 



70 GUIDE TO. MEXICO. 



GUANAJUATO. 



This city of some seventy thousand inhabitants 
-is picturesquely set in a frame of great mountains, 
in the center of a very rich mining district. It 
contains many fine public and private buildings 
and a branch mint. American enterprise and in- 
dustry could make room and business here. 

TEAPUATO. 

This is a city of some twenty thousand inhabi- 
tants and a lucrative business point, with room for 
Americans. It is a fair agricultural section; but, 
like nearly all parts of Central and Northern Mex- 
ico, the farms, or ranches, as they are called in 
Spanish, are too large and expensi\^ for small 
American farmers of moderate means. It is 
known as the "strawberry market,"' because there 
is never a train passes in the whole year, but fresh, 
ripe strawberries are offered for sale to the pas- 
sengers at twenty-five cents a basket in Mexican 
silver. 

It is also the junction of the Guadalajara 
branch, extenrling west one hundred and sixty-one 
miles. This branch line runs through a very rich 
agricultural country, that grows big crops of 
wheat, corn, sugar, and as fine oranges as any in 
the Republic. The train passes through Penjamo, 
a rustic old city of some ten thousand inhabitants, 
and thence to "La Piedad," with about the same 
number of souls, and no less quaint and ancient. 
The next station of importance is La Barca, a city 



an IDE TO MEXICO. 71 

of fifteen thousand, and the greatest orange ship- 
ping station in Mexico. It is situated on the Ler- 
ma, the longest river in Mexico, near where it 
empties into Lake Chapala. Fifty miles west of 
La Barca, and fifteen miles before the train arrives 
at Guadalajara, at the station "El Castillo," a 
tramway leads out to the falls of Juanacatlan, the 
^'^Niagara of Mexico." The river plunges headlong 
over a precipice a hundred feet to the rocks below, 
making a sublime scene of awful grandeur. 

GUADALAJARA. 

This is the capital of the State of Jalisco, with 
a population of one hundred and thirty-five thou- 
sand, the finest city in Mexico, and second only to 
the city of Mexico, in point of inhabitants and 
commercial importance. It is well laid out, with 
.streets running at right angles, exquisitely shaded 
with lovely trees, and embellished with the most 
beautiful parks, gardens, and public buildings in 
Mexico. The hospital contains twenty-three 
•courts, called "patios" in Spanish, each a tropical 
grove and garden of flowers in itself, with foun- 
tains and walks. There is a fashionable drive, 
"The Pasco," laid out along the Eiver San Juan 
de Dios. This is also a big shipping point for or- 
anges and a leading manufacturing center, as 
well as distributing market for a vast and rich ter-r 
.Titory. The city is clean and has no beggars. Its 
schools are of the highest order. The climate is 
delightful all the year round, and rainfall boun- 
tiful, but not entirely exempt from light frosts 



72 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

once in a great while. No place under the sun has 
a more promising future for Americans, with large 
or small means, as population and business ^vill 
probably double in the next fifteen years, or less, 
at the present strides they are making. 

The extension of the railway now terminates at 
Ameca, a booming town of twelve thousand in- 
habitants, down in a delightful valley, between 
Guadalajara and the Pacific Ocean, in the direc- 
tion of Banderas Bay. The road leads through 
one of the finest agricultural and grazing districts 
in the country, which stretches away far and wide 
on either side and yet lower down toward the 
coast. Corn fields, under crude native methods 
of cultivation, with as good crops as any in the 
United States, abound in all directions. 

The State of Jalisco is a great country in itself, 
extending from the high tableland region to the 
Pacific coast. It has room for as many American 
farmers, large or small, as may care to seek homes 
in its bounds. But water transportation to the 
United States is far less practical from the Pa- 
cific than from the Gulf coast of Mexico. But it 
is time to go back to the main line at Irapuato. 

SALAMANCA. 

This is a thriving manufacturing city, whose 
straw and leather goods are celebrated, though a 
small place, the next of importance south of Ira- 
puato, with room for enterprise and industry. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. ^ 73. 



CELAYA. 



This is a city of some eighteen thousand in-- 
habitants, with extensive cotton and woolen mills, 
and makes fine confectionery that is famous. 
Americans can make room there for new enter- 
prises and industries. 



QUERETAEO. 

This is the capital of the State of the same- 
name, and a city of some sixty thousand inhabi- 
tants, supposed to have been founded by the Az- 
tecs about the year 1446. It is a manufacturing 
center, and has near it the most extensive cotton 
mills in the Eepublic. It is also the center of the 
wonderful opal mines of Mexico, that have been 
worked for centuries and continue to yield goods 
of very superior quality. Queretaro is where 
Maximilian was captured and shot in 1867. 



TULA. 

This small place is noted for its ancient ruins,, 
being one of the oldest places in the Republic, 
and has a church three hundred years old, with 
walls seven feet thick and a tower one hundred 
and twenty-five feet high. It is unimportant now, 
except as a junction of the Pachuca branch of the 
railway. 



74 ' . GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



PACHUCA. 

This is a city of possibly fifty thousand inhabi- 
tants, and a mining center with a mint. It was 
very prosperous till many of the mines became 
flooded some two years ago; but they are getting 
in shape again to resume work. There is nothing 
there to tempt Americans beyond mining indus- 
tries and the employment they afford. There are 
many English-speaking people there. But a re- 
turn to the main line is again in order. 

The first scene of interest, south of Tula, is the 
great Nochistongo cut, commenced in 1607 — a 
work designed by the Spaniards to drain the val- 
ley of Mexico, in which they sacrificed more than 
three hundred thousand Indians. The cut is 
from two hundred and eighty to six hundred and 
thirty feet wide and one hundred and fifty to one 
hundred and ninety-six feet deep, and of great 
length. The dirt was all carried out On the backs 
of Indians. The great enterprise was worthless, 
being too high to drain the valley. 

From the cut, along the side of which the rail- 
way was built, the train passes over a low range 
of hills and enters the great valley of Mexico. 
The spires and domes of the capitol of Mexico 
gleam against a background of eternal snow, the 
summits of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl ascend- 
ing heavenward. It is a sul)lime spectacle. 

The valley is in a high state of cultivation,- 
dotted thickly with numerous small towns,- 
through which the train glides along into its final 
station of Buena Vista, a name immortalized in 
the Mexican war. 



76 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



CITY OF MEXICO. 

This city has probably more than three hundred 
and seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and is sup- 
posed to be more than six hundred years old. It 
contains one hundred and twenty churches, the 
grand cathedral having eighty-five thousand 
square feet of floor space and two towers, each 
two hundred feet high. There are some palatial 
private residences and fine business houses. 
There are many Americans, and English is spoken 
in nearly all stores of any pretensions. American 
enterprises and industries might make room for 
themselves on a large scale, under methods en- 
tirely different from those now in vogue. Ameri- 
cans now in business are getting on nicely. 

Every schoolboy should know so much about 
the City of Mexico that it seems a waste of time 
and space to dwell longer on its description, which 
is merely an enlarged photograph of other points^ 
in many respects and features. 

MEXICAN NATIONAL EAILWAY. 

This is the Laredo route, and enters Mexico at 
New Laredo, opposite Laredo, Texas. It is two 
hundred and sixty-five miles, shortest route, to 
Mexico City, but this advantage is largely counter- 
acted by the fact that it is a narrow-gauge road 
that necessitates the transfer of passengers, bag- 
gage and freight. There is fine scenery on the 
line, ten thousand feet above the sea level. San 
Luis Potosi, described already, is also on this 



QVIDE TO MEXICO. 77 

line, which leaves but two other commercial cen- 
ters of importance. 

MONTEEEY. 

As already stated, this is a very important 
manufacturing city, with large and prosperous 
American industries, which prove clearly what is 
possible at many other points. 

TOLUCA. 

This is a beautiful and thriving place, in a fer- 
tile and productive valley, some six hours' run 
from Mexico City. It is a manufacturing center, 
and has one of the largest breweries in the coun- 
try. There are many tributary towns of respect- 
able size, not on the railway line, that greatly in- 
<irease the trade of Toluca. Nothing tropical 
grows there. There should be fine openings for 
Americans. 

This line also has a new branch from the junc- 
tion of Acambaro to Patzcuaro, in the hot coun- 
try of the State of Michoacan, which passes 
through Morelia, a pretty place. The State of 
Michoacan is new, as to development inspired by 
railway transportation, and has broad acres that 
would make desirable American farms and graz- 
ing lands. 

INTERNATIONAL RAILWAY. 

This is the Eagle Pass route, that enters Mexico 
at Ciudad Diaz, joining the Mexican Central at 



7S GUIDE- W MEXICO. 

Torreon. The Ijne fs located in northern Mexico 
and the high tablehmd country of central Mexico, 
not of much interest to the average American 
farmer, and offers no great show for merchants 
and manufacturers. It passes Sabinas, Monclova 
and Trevino, all points of some importance and 
promise. '' 

THE MONTEEEY & MEXICAN GULF EAIL- 

WAY. 

This line connects Tampico with Monterey, and 
is three hundred and eighty-nine jniles long. It 
passes Victoria and Linares, an orange belt that 
was badly damaged by frost when Florida was 
frozen out. Otherwise, it is not of much interest 
to Americans, unless they wish to go from Tam- 
pico to Monterey. 

THE MEXICO, CrEEXAYACA & PACIFIC 
EAILWAY. 

This line is in course of construction, to connect 
Mexico City with the Pacific coast at Acapulco, 
nearly one hundred miles being complete and in 
operation. It starts from the City of ^lexico, and 
ascends two thousand five hundred feet, almost in 
siglit of the city, from which elevation it descends 
five, thousand feet in a short distance to Cuerna- 
vaca, where Cortez built a palace. At Ciicrna- 
vaca and thence onward, for a long distance, in 
the direction of the coast, is fine farm and fruit 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. ' 79 



and grazing lands. The line will be of great im- 
portance to the commerce of the City of Mexico, 
as the only quick and direct connection with the 
Pacific Ocean. 



THE HIDALGO & NORTHEx^STER^ RAIL- 
WAY. . 

♦ This is a narrow-gauge line, in course of con- 
struction from the City of Mexico to Tuxpan, a 
port on the Gulf of Mexico. The main line is in 
operation one hundred and forty miles, to the city 
of Tulancingo, in the State of Puebla, and a 
branch to Pachuca is also in operation. Thus far, 
it has not passed the high tableland country, and 
hence, has little interest for Americans. 

THE MEXICAN SOUTHERN RAILWAY. 

This is an inland narrow-gauge line, three hun- 
dred and fifty mile's long, connecting the cities of 
Puebla and Oaxaca. descending from a high to a 
Iaw, hot land. It is not specially interesting to 
Americans seeking: Mexican homes. 



'& 



THE NATIONAL ISTHMUS OF TEHUANTE- 
PEC RAILWAY. 

This line, built, owned and operated by the 
Mexican Government, is one hundred and ninety 
miles long, and leads from Coatzacoalcos, on the 
Gulf of Mexico, to Salina Cruz, on the Pacific 
Ocean. The gulf port would be the proper place 



so GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

to land from steamers, should anyone leave the 
United States by water, to go to the Isthmus of 
Tehuantepec. The Coatzacoalcos river also emp- 
ties into the gulf at the same point. As already 
stated, the isthmus is a very rich section of the 
country, of much interest to Americans, many of 
whom are settling at San Juan Evanjalista and 
other points, reached from Coatzacoalcos. 

MEXICAN RAILWAY. 

This line leads from Vera Cruz to the City of 
Mexico, and has branches to Pachuca and Puebla, 
making, in all, some three hundred and fifty miles 
of the finest track in the Republic, having. iron 
cross ties. It is the oldest road in Mexico. Two 
companies failed while trying to build it, and an 
English company now owns it. Masterful en- 
gineering skill was required to climb the moun- 
tain more than eight thousand feet in a hundred 
miles, from Vera Cruz to Esperanza. The ascent 
is in a much shorter distance, as the country is 
nearly level some forty miles out from Vera Cruz. 

VERA CRUZ. 

This is a city of the gulf, of some forty thou- 
sand inhabitants, where Cortez landed and burned 
his ships. It is where Americans who come to 
the. Vera Cruz district by water would land. Fifty 
miles out at sea, in the early morning watch, while 
all is yet dark where rolls the "ocean wave," the 
first glint of a sunbeam may be seen, up yonder, 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 81 

more than seventeen thousand feet high and a 
hundred and twenty miles away, bathing and 
transfusing into gold and jasper the thousand 
years of snow that crowns Orizaba mountain. 
There once glowed volcanic fires up there where 
eternal winter now wields the sway, fires so fierce 
and powerful that they hurled huge rocks and lava 
to the coast, more than fifty miles. But this was 
in an age long dead, who can tell how ancient? 

The commercial and industrial advantages of 
A^era Cruz have been outlined and cannot be over- 
drawn. Americans there and at interior points, 
working in harmony, can make for themselves and 
the Republic of their adoption the New York of 
Mexico. People, money and energy will do the 
transformation act in time incredibly short. The 
Mexicans are doing their best, but they have not 
men and money enough to develop such a com- 
bination of resources as rapidly as the destiny of 
their great country demands. 

The Mexican Eailway leads out from Vera Cruz, 
through a broad belt of low country, little used 
for any purpose but grazing, though it produces 
fine corn and other crops, where odd patches are 
occasionally planted. 

Some forty miles up the line the outskirts of 
the coffee belt is reached. For two or three sta- 
tions the country is too rugged to be desirable for 
settlements, though both coffee and fruits grow 
nicely. A little beyond the station of Paso del 
Macho the wild and gorgeous scenery of the tropi- 
cal mountains shadows forth to view, though less 
grand and terrible than some distance farther up. 

Mexico— 6 



82 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



COEDOBA. 

This old town has something less than twenty 
thousand inhabitants, but its name is familiar in 
all the coffee markets of the world. It is the cen- 
ter of some of the oldest and largest plantations in 
the country, as well as numerous thriving villages, 
whose people have grown rich in a few years from 
the proceeds of their coffee. Unfortunately for 
the town, it has been scourged by yellow fever 
about once in ten years, though in the mountains, 
nearly three thousand feet above Vera Cruz. It 
is one of the finest orange sections in the Repub- 
lic, and grows pineapples prolifically, equal to 
those of Cuba, though much better keepers. The 
country teems with otlier tropical fruits, in all 
directions. 

The junction is here of a railway, partly built, 
that was meant to penetrate the finest sugar and 
tobacco section of the Republic, much of which is 
yet remote from transportation. 

ORIZABA. 

This quaint old city and its manufacturing 
suburbs have possibly sixty thousand inhabitants. 
It is destined to become the Manchester of Mexico, 
because of the many factories it has that are now 
in course of construction and projected for the 
near future. It is also a fine orange center, and 
in the cream of the coffee belt. 




Coffee Ranch — Orizaba Valley. 



84 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

MAL TRATA. 

Tills is a small station, the second above Ori- 
zaba, but entirely out of the coffee belt, where 
any fruits of the United S.tates grow to fine per- 
fection. From Mai Trata to the summit of the 
mountain there is no scenery anywhere to be seen 
from a railway train of more startling grandeur. 

APAZACO. 

This old city, the same as others between the 
summit of the mountain and the City of Mexico, 
has very little to interest home-seeking Americans. 
It contains a orlass factory, and is the junction of 
the Puebla branch of the Mexican Eailway. 

PUEBLA. 

This is a large city, the capitol of the State of 
the same name, and the center of a fine wheat and 
corn-growing district. It is also a manufacturing 
city, and has a brewery. 

INTEROCEAXIC RAILWAY. 

This narrow-gauge line leads from Vera Cruz 
to the City of ^lexico, through Puebla and other 
points reached by the Mexican Railway. 

JALAPA. 

This is a mountain city, the capitol of the State 
of Vera Cruz, in a coffee and fruit center, much 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. §5 

the same as Cordoba and Orizaba, and has inter- 
esting tributary towns. This line has also a 
branch road leading down into the State of 
Morelos from Mexico City to Puente de Ixtla, a 
fine fruit country, where oranges are wormy. 
The oranges from Yautepec, on this branch, have 
caused the impression that Mexican oranges are 
generally wormy, which is erroneous. 

ALVEEADO EAILWAY. 

This is a short narrow-gauge line, leading from 
Vera Cruz to Alverado, the mouth of the San 
Juan river, from which point steamers run daily 
to Tlacotalpam, where the three branches of the 
Tiver unite, as already descrilDed. This is the 
route settlers would take from Vera Cruz to reach 
the San Juan river country. 

Alverado is the finest fishing point on the coast, 
as it is a short distance inland from the bar, and, 
hence, protected from violent gulf storms that 
often render fishing impossible near Vera Cruz. 
The great red snapper fishing banks are some dis- 
tance nearer Alverado than Vera Cruz. Hence, 
all Alverado needs to take the fishing industry 
away from Vera Cruz is suitable transportation 
arrangements and an ice factory and cold storage 
plant to prepare them for shipment to the in- 
terior. The business is handled barbarously at 
Vera Cruz, and the fish shipped to the City of 
Mexico in bulk, in hot box-cars, with some broken 
ice thrown on them when they start. Naturally, 
they never have fish of the flavor that proper care^ 



gg GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

would carry shipments from Vera Cruz to the 
City of Mexico, and thence to interior markets. 

FEONTEEA. 

This city is the port where one would land if 
going to the State of Tabasco. It is situated at 
the moutli of Grifalea river, that flows down by 
San Juan Bautista, the capitol of the State of 
Tabasco. As already stated, the banks of this 
river would make as fine banana plantations as 
any anywhere, and sugar, rubber and other tropi- 
cal crops not excelled anywhere. 

The Pacific coast country is not accessible to 
American settlement, and will not be soon, except 
from the California coast of the United States, 
and, hence, need not be considered now. There 
is a very long stretch of fine country along the 
Pacific coast, where cheap homes may be secured; 
but the only practical way to get there would be 
by sea from San Francisco or San Diego, Cali- 
fornia. The long rail route, after transportation 
by sea, would make the shipment of perishable 
products out of the question. The National 
Tehuaniepec Eailway is a practical connection; 
and the ^Icxico, Cuernavaca «.^^ Pacific Eailway 
will be another, some day. The soil, the produc- 
tions and the climate of the Pacific coast country 
are much the same as the Vera Cruz district con- 
tains. But tliere is room for desirable homes for 
all the settlers likely to go from the United States 
to Mexico in a generation, far more accessible than 
the remote Pncific coast, with ])ractical channels 
of direct communication. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 87 



HOW TO GO. 

If one wishes to go all rail, by Mexican Cen- 
tral Eailway, the El Paso route, the Santa Fe 
route and connections, to United States points, 
will give excursion or emigrate rates to any point 
in Mexico. Ask your ticket agent for rate, be- 
fore ready to start, and he will send and get the 
special rate, if he should not have it. 

The Southern Pacific Eailway and connections 
will do the same, by the Eagle Pass route. 

The Missouri Pacific, Iron Mountain & South- 
ern Eailways and connections will do the same, 
1)y the Laredo route; while The International & 
(ireat jSTorthern Eailway and connections also 
reach the Laredo route. 

If the water trip from New York or the South 
should be preferable, James E. Ward & Co., x^o. 
113 Wall street, New York, agents New York & 
Cuba Mail Steam Ship Co., will give rate and sail- 
ing dates from New York, New Orleans and Mo- 
bile, to Tampico, Tuxpan, Vera Cruz, Coatzacoal- 
cos and Frontera, Mexico; and agents Mexican 
Gulf Steamship Co., at New Orleans and ]\Iobile, 
will do the same, as also the agent of Atlantic & 
Mexican Gulf Steamship Co., at Mobile, for pas- 
sage from New Orleans or Mobile to points in 
Mexico, named above. The same agents can sell 
through tickets to all interior points in Mexico, 
which are the better to buy, at the start. Such 
through passages may be arranged cheaply, es- 
pecially if several persons are going together. 
There are excursion, as well as emigrant rates, 



88 GviDE TO Mexico: 

the latter very miicli cheaper than the former. 
If a poor family wishes to economize, the emigrant 
passage will do nicely and prove much more com- 
fortable and convenient than second-class rail pas- 
sage. 

The same agents will name the weight of hag- 
gage that may go free, and the rate of freight on 
any excess, if so requested. All these details 
should be arranged before leaving home, as both 
money, delay and annoyance, on the way, will thus 
be avoided. 

It will probably be necessary to buy local tick- 
ets from starting point to New York, New Or- 
leans or Mobile, as the case may be. 

"West of Chicago and St. Louis, the all-rail route 
will be more desirable than rail and water, while 
east of those points rail and water will be cheaper 
and better for families than all rail. If the pas- 
sage by rail is less to New York than to New 
Orleans or Mobile, that would be the route to 
take, if cheapness is an object. The passage by 
steamer will be about the same from all points of 
sailing — not very much more from New York 
than from southern points, and the time not much 
longer, except to Tampico, which is direct and 
quick from New Orleans or Mobile, but to Vera 
Cruz and other gulf ports of Mexico not much 
quicker than from New York. 

Once landed in Mexico, and at the point se- 
lected, some merchant or other person can be 
found, without much trouble, who will direct one 
to the most desirable locality for a home. An 
American, or some Mexican who speaks English, 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 89 

can -Qsually be found. Steamship agents are 
usually well posted. This applies to farmers' and 
stoekraisers. As to persons desiring to establish 
business or factories, it would be well to keep their 
own counsels while making some observations and 
investigations, or, at least, not seek information 
at the start from persons in the same line of busi- 
ness contemplated. 

Farmers would do well to keep out of the hand& 
of land companies, unless such land is found in 
the section selected to be more desirable than any 
other. Many people in the land business have as- 
good property as any in the Republic, and in the 
most desirable sections, while others have neither;, 
and these are the dealers who are likely to mislead 
settlers. Get all the information from land deal- 
ers and anyone else you possibly can; examine 
everything with personal care, and then use your 
own practical judgment. In this way there will 
be little danger of going far astray. 

Persons who go to seek employment without 
any previous arrangement will have to take about 
the same course they would in a strange place in 
the United Stat(!s. Their only practical show 
will be in the manufacturing, mining and com- 
mercial centers, or with the railway companies. 
All the railways have their headquarters in the 
City of Mexico. The leading commercial, manu- 
facturing, and mining points have been named,, 
and the best route to reach them given. But do 
not go unless you are competent and qualified, ta 
do Mexican work, without an engagement. If 
you can speak and write Spanish fairly well, and 



90 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

imtlerstand the work you wish to do, yon would 
not be long idle at any place where there is much 
to do, even were you to go blindly, with no en- 
gagement. Yet above all else master the Spanish 
before yon start. 

SILVER. 

The writer is an exporter and has a big plant 
in the Eepublic, witli no other class of business 
tlian that of preparing Mexican products for 
market, and shipping them to the United States. 
From a self-interested point of view, the silver 
currency of Mexico is the best financial system in 
the world, and the cheaper the silver the better 
tlie inducement to do business. Many products 
of Mexico, suitable for export, are converted into 
gold at their cost in silver. 

To illustrate: In 189G, when the price of gold 
ranged between eighty-five per cent and ninety- 
five per cent premium, before the passage of tlie 
Dingley Bill, we jiaid seven dollars to eight dol- 
lars, silver, for an article, that we bought in 189T, 
after the Diugley law went into effect, at from 
four dollars and fifty cents to six dollars, silver, 
when the ))remium on gold ranged from one dollar 
and twenty cents to one dollar and forty cents per 
dollar, and the price of the product was twenty- 
five per cent higher in the United States, in conse- 
quence of the new tariff, than in 1890. The busi- 
ness was demoralized for some time, at the start of 
the Dingley law, aiul there were few buyers, and 
no show to move much of the crop. This lowered 
prices in Mexico, though the ]>aying medium was 
worth less gold than in any jirevious season. 



^A,-: %'^ J 




Year-Old Banana— Frontera, Tabasco. 



92 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

This is true, in a greater or less degree, as to 
most exportable products of the country. They 
are bought, without exception, for silver, and sold 
for gold. Hence, exporters are not trying to get 
the gold standard in Mexico. 

All home products consumed in the Eepublic 
are bought of producers and sold to consumers 
for silver. Eailway passage and freight, in Mex- 
ico, are in silver. Wages are paid in silver. 
Local prices of native commodities and prices of 
labor do not change with the rise and fall of sil- 
ver. The medium and poor classes use very little 
value "of foreign goods. The rich and dressy peo- 
ple only know that silver is cheap when they go 
to buy luxuries, and the importer knows it when 
he goes to buy foreign exchange, to pay for the 
goods that he must sell for cheap silver. 

For practical purposes, among the masses, a 
cheap silver dollar goes about as far in Mexico as 
a gold dollar in the Fnited States. 

But, how long is this going to last? It would 
not work at all in the United States, where labor 
organizations are ready to strike at any moment, 
for less cause than paying them in dollars worth 
less than fifty cents. In Mexico there are no 
unions of labor and no strikes. It is a matter of 
no consequence to the poor what the rich have 
to pay for luxuries. The majority of the people 
do not even know that silver is depreciated, for 
the reason that they never see any other money, 
and that a dollar always buys about the same 
quantity of the necessaries of life, unless the ex- 
treme shortness of some staple crop raises prices; 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 93 

and even then the money is not blamed. The 
Mexican masses are very docile and very patient. 
If idle they do not make any disturbance. 

Bnt all this is no valid argument that Mexico 
and her people are better off with dollars now 
worth forty-five cents in the United States than 
they would be with a currency at par. Certainly, 
the exporter would lose much of his big profit, 
and the producer would have more money to 
spend, compared with present foreign standards. 
The people are better off now than they were 
when their dollars were at a premium in foreign 
markets, some twenty-five years ago, and even 
since, yet it were absurd to assume that the de- 
cline in silver improved their condition. Little 
more than twenty years have passed since the 
time when there were no railways nor factories 
in the country, and when the devastation of civil 
war blurred the face of every section of the Ee- 
public. The people were reduced to conditions of 
pitiful distress, and sheer want, in many commu- 
nities of Mexico. 

Peace, plenty of labor and the general pros- 
perity that railways, factories and the export of 
products have created, have ameliorated the hard 
lot of the poor, while the purchasing power of 
their dollar was steadily decreasing abroad. It 
Avere idiotic to assert that they would not be as 
well off as they are now had their money re- 
mained at a premium, or even at par. 

There are certain irresistible radical forces at 
work to change the financial status of Mexico. 
What are they? Education and the progressive 



94 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

light that it kindles. The 3'oimg generation of 
Mexicans will be bright and w.ell posted, and wide 
awake to the vital interest of individuals, com- 
mnnities, States and the Eepublic. When the 
President of the Republic stands up and publicly 
distributes the school rewards to hundreds of 
children, rich, middle class and poor, indiscrim- 
inatel}^ the education of the masses receives an 
impetus sure to develop a high grade of popular 
intelligence. 

All the foreo:oino; causes seem to be evolutioniz- 
ing the people, as very many parents, abundantly 
imbued with a copper hue of complexion, have 
blond, blue-eyed children. This fact is notice- 
able, in some degree, in all sections of the Ee- 
public. 

The rising generation of Mexicans will not be 
behind the people of the United States in pro- 
gressive ideas end institutions, and will not be 
satisfied with a depreciated currency, nor with the 
stranger doing the business of the country. ^lex- 
icans, even the most stupid of the old peon class, 
learn any class of skilled labor very quickly, aud 
are apt pupils in learning such other tricks of the 
stranger as anyone tries to teach them. The new 
generation will need no teachers. Tlie young 
Mexicans will have caught the progressive vim of 
the Yankee without imbibino: his ruinous political 
propensities, and hence, be able to cope with 
financial problems thnt threnten to wreck the free 
institutions of the Ignited States. 

For these reasons the Mexican dolhir will prob- 
ably be at par, or nearly so, with tlie money of 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 95 

other countries, within the next ten years. Even 
the men of this day are waking up out of the 
lethargy that has been the curse of Mexico for 
ages. They see what the stranger is doing in 
their country, and many of them are beginning to 
imitate and follow his methods. 

The reader now has a fair general idea of Mex- 
ico, as concisely as so large and varied a question 
may be presented, sufficient, it is hoped, to lead 
him to intelligent conclusions. All that has been 
said has been without the bias of partiality, 
asserted without fear, favor or affection, under 
the conviction that the people of the United 
States have never had full information about Mex- 
ico, and how to go there. ISTo railway company, 
land company, government nor private party has 
contributed toward the cost of this production, 
nor has one sentence been written with a design 
to benefit anyone beyond the actual merits of the 
line named or the interest indicated. The inter- 
est of prospective settlers has been the actuating 
motive throughout, and under no other state of 
circumstances could a fair, honest guide be writ- 
ten — one that would not mislead by its omissions 
of interesting features, while its selfish statements 
might not be too highly colored. 

Read a cartload of all the railroad and land 
company literature, that is poised as finger boards 
to Mexico, that is given away so profusely that 
rag pickers o^lean it from ticket offices, in their 
rounds, after reading this, and decide which gives 
information most practical and serviceable to ona 
wishing to visit Mexico for any reason. 



2Q GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

Before concluding, it seems opportune and ap- 
propriate to give some little outlines of predomin- 
ating characteristics of the Mexican people, 
wherein the line of demarcation differs widely 
from what prevails in the United States; and. es- 
pecially, as already promised, some account of the 
inflexible faith in their Virgin, Guadalupe. Their 
feast days, called holidays, in English, make a 
very strong feature in the Mexican life. And 
their religious loyalty is a marvel of mysteries, 
superficially viewed, when one remembers whence 
came the faith to which they pay homage; and 
the bitter antipathy they cherished for so many 
dark and weary ages, for their conquerers, makes 
it appear yet more extraordinary that any insti- 
tution that came from Spain should now be an 
object of reverence, among the liberated masses, 
who yet hate Spain and Spaniards as cordially as 
their ancestors detested them, in days of the most 
galling slavery Mexicans ever endured. But, 
there is perhaps one explanation, and only one, 
found in the name "Guadalupe.'' 

Christmas will be the first festive scene pre- 
sented, which may serve as a passing relaxation 
from the prosy monotony of practical things. 

CHRISTMAS IX MEXICO. 

Christmas in Mexico would be a wonder and a 
show to Americans who never passed the holidays 
in a Spanish-American country. 

Reflect one passing moment on the stage of the 
scene about to shadow forth, and try to imagine 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 97 

what you cannot see and what none can ever 
know. 

Here we are on the classic strand of the Mexi- 
can Gulf, whose sleepless tide chants the plaintive 
lullaby that was old a hundred thousand years ago. 
The shore is the border of a land whose deep, un- 
told mystery has, perchance, no rivaling history 
beneath the starry marvels of the sky. Euins of 
dateless cities, older than any accorded a place in 
the page of remotest chronicles, attest that Mexico 
was older than Babylon is today, long ages before 
the Aztec race ever roamed over her mystic vales. 
This is no idle dream. Let those who doubt 
come and see the proof. 

But it was of Christmas, in this strange land of 
peculiar people, that we were to debate. 

Yet, pause one fleeting moment and contem- 
plate the people who dwell from mountain peak 
to ocean wave. Where was the natal shore of the 
blood that came not from Spain? Who were the 
people who perished ere the Aztec came, or were 
exterminated by his race? Both they and he had 
their gods and temples more grand and massive 
than those Rome has built on their nameless 
ruins — sites that hence yet appear more divinely 
desolate than they would with no shrines above 
their silent tombs. Why did they all die and 
leave no pictured page nor fairy legend to tell 
their pathetic story? Nothing remains but 
buried cities and voiceless shrines to tell you what 
was and is not, save something vague and shad- 
owy in the restless, dreamy eye of sorrow that 
Mexico— 7 



98 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

looks upon you in every walk of life, and seems to 
bear a speechless record of the distant past. 

But, now there appears a dash of Spanish blood 
in almost every Aztec vein. There is scarcely one 
clear-blooded native in a thousand. 

And like their blood, their gods and temples 
have been changed, and such a change. Eome 
and the cross have triumphed over all besides. 

But they have their Christmas, a gay and fes- 
tive one, free from care and sorrow, a more merry 
Christmas than the freer and more favored chil- 
dren of the United States ever enjoy. Come and 
see them in the gloaming of a tropic eve that dies 
without a twilight, tripping light-heartedly from 
shop to shop, bent on missions of love and duty. 
This is on your Christmas eve, their "noche 
bueno," as it is called in Spanish. 

There are hasty calls and reunions of friends 
and families, through all the early hours of the 
night. The streets, the shops and the dwellings 
are brightly illuminated and fantastically decor- 
ated. 

At length the weird midnight spreads a brood- 
ing, flapless wing over the mirthful scene; but 
the merry revelers heed it not, as the deep-toned 
bells that proclaim the phantom hour, that is sa 
solemn and still in other lands, knell the incep- 
tion of the feast. All the world is then sum- 
moned to the table to partake of the Christmas 
dinner the people of the United States eat at noon 
Christmas day. There is notliing solemn nor sad 
in all Mexico. The lights are not permitted to 
burn blue, as they arc said to burn at midnight 



100 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

in other climes. The slave is free, the poor are 
rich, and earth is heaven for a little season. 

For an hour or more the tables hold f casters 
spell hound, not only by exquisitely tempting 
dishes and delicately flavored wines, but by witch- 
ing conversation, for which the Spanish tongue is 
unsurpassed by other language of the earth. 

Sleep is not on the bill of fare. Little children 
are not drowsy. The festal dinner is but the 
beginning of raptures of the night. From the 
tables there is a rush for the ball rooms. All is 
life and joy. The air is rife with perfume and 
resonant with divinest music. Eare evergreens 
and matchless flowers are everywhere. 

Mexican dances are slow and languid, but full 
of majestic motion, and rapturous beyond any 
other episode of life among young people of the 
Eepublic, as the beau and the sweetheart are 
paired in ever}^ set. At no other time is there 
ever close communion among young lovers, except 
in the blissful dance. They never go alone to 
theatre, nor church, nor for a walk nor a drive, 
nor is the beau admitted to the liome of the girl. 
It is an extraordinary event if she sees him in her 
house. She must receive him through a grated 
window, like a fairy prisoner, while he stands in 
the street outside her home, in sunshine or rain. 
If he is not at his post once in twenty-four hours, 
he is by no means a devoted lover. This goes on 
for years and years, when the young man is not 
able to make a home and ju'ovide for a wife. The 
girl receives the attention of no other man. This 
social law is as inexorable as that of the Medes 
and Persians. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 101 

The Mexican girl is as attractive in the ball 
room as the dark-eyed maids of Spain, about 
whom poets have ever raved. It is very rare to 
see one perfectly homely, without some redeeming 
trait of beauty. The hair and eye are sure to be 
luxuriant and winning, no matter how ugly the 
features. 

There are three types; the clear-blooded Cas- 
tilian, the offspring of Spanish parentage, that 
never mingled with the native race; three-quarters 
or more of the same Spanish blood, lightly tinged 
with that of the yelloAV tribes; and three-quarters^ 
more or less, of Aztec blood, gently modified by 
pure infusion from proud Spanish veins. Some 
of the maids of this last t)''pe are very beautiful, 
the copper color of their race being toned to a 
deep brunette, with long, glossy, black hair and 
the soft, dreamy, dark eyes of Andalusia. Some 
few of the other types are as beautiful as any 
women on the earth, and most of their less for- 
tunate sisters are not without winning character- 
istics. 

Such are the components of the upper walks of 
life. The second class contains the same ele- 
ments of blood, but possesses less of the material 
things of earth, which puts its members below the 
social cream. 

Beneath all comes the poor peon, the bone and 
sinew of Mexico, the slave of Montezuma, of the 
Spaniard subsequently, and of the class that holds 
the lands and other substance of the country to- 
day, though often with the same blood throbbing 
in lowly veins that pulsates in the upper walks of 



202 GVIDE TO MEXICO. 

life. He^ too, has his midnight dinner and dance, 
truly more humble than those of his master, yet 
no less real and impressive. While he has his 
fowl he is content with pulque, the national bever- 
age or rum, the cheap intoxicant of Mexico, in- 
stead of wine. 

Early mass in the cathedrals is a grand feature 
of Christmas morning in Mexico, and everybody 
goes to church some time during the day. 

The decoration of the churches would be incon- 
ceivable among people of frosty countries, where 
it would be almost impossible to have such a dis- 
play of flowers on Christmas day as render the 
churches of Mexico beautiful beyond description. 
Such exquisite' flowers are the free-will offerings of 
the lady members of the churches, plucked from 
their own gardens, without money and without 
price. 

THE BULL FIGHT. 

This may appear to the average American as a 
peculiar feature .of Christmas devotion, following 
the beautiful and impressive services held in all 
the churches, previous to the hour of admittance 
to the bull ring. People of all classes go. The 
sport is an ancient one, that came from Spain to 
stay while Spanish blood flows in Mexican veins. 
Whether it ever had the approval of the Church, 
who can tell? It certainly never had the inter- 
diction of the Church, which has nearly always 
had the power to have stopped in Spain anything 
obnoxious to its will. The exhibition of this 
spectacle often takes place on Sunday, and on the 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 103 

yet more sacred holidays. On some occasions, in 
Mexico City and other large places, twenty-five 
dollars, and even fifty dollars are paid for the 
more desirable seats, and as much as five dollars 
for standing room in sun or rain, as the case may 
he, so long as there is an opportunity to see the 
arena of blood. This is proof positive of the 
popular interest in the bull fight, possibly too 
powerful for the law and gospel of this age. 

The bulls are bred of peculiar stock, and wild 
as beasts of prey. Fortunes have been made in 
this industry. Many of the best animals are jet 
black, and as fine specimens as eye ever saw, 
majestically bold and terrible, in appearance, as 
the ferocious lions of the bloody circus of ancient 
Rome. 

This noble animal is confined in a narrow stall, 
with a door that opens into the arena, so that 
■when opened he sees at once a chance to gain his 
lost liberty, for which he makes a frantic, joyful 
plunge. What a cruel deception. His stately 
head erect, his proud nostrils distended, his 
grand eyes fiashing defiance, he dashes forth to 
the view of an expectant, impatient audience, with 
more precipitate action than the rising curtain 
ever discloses the culminating scene of a dread 
tragedy on the stage. He is greeted by the wild 
huzzas of thronging thousands, the gorgeous ap- 
parel and waving handkerchiefs of the frenzied 
multitude. This is all new to his unprepared 
nature. If he has thinking faculties and takes 
time to reflect, he imagines he has been suddenly 
hiurled headlong into pandemonium. But the 



204 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

tumult is in the seats above him. He knows from 
instinct or intuition that the people up there are 
not barriers in his way, and he rushes madly for 
freedom on his own level. 

Lo! he quickly beholds that he is surrounded 
by impassable walls and menaced by horsemen, 
the same foes, apparently, who deprived him of his 
liberty and forced him, a captive, from his native 
mountain to his narrow prison of the moment. 
Unawed he dashes into the combat, so unequal as 
to make his courage more admirable than any 
human bravery. He disdains his adversaries, and 
seeks neither liberty nor escape from their on- 
slaughts. Danger is an unknown factor to his 
gallantry. 

At the first daring bound horse and rider go 
down before him as if struck by an engine in a 
career of sixty miles an hour. The horse is fin- 
ished, and the rider lands sprawling flat on the 
ground. His bullship promptly disengages his 
horns from the body of the horse, and is ready 
to make quick work of the imperiled rider. But 
a goad pricks him from behind. Like an athlete 
he turns to face his new assailant, while the most 
frantic shouts of delight ring, again and again, 
from above. In an instant the second horse and 
rider are in the predicament of the first, the peril 
of the rider being yet more desperate, ere rescue 
turns the brave animal in an other direction. 

Faster and more furious the valiant animal now 
wages the combat, his body bathed in his own 
blood and that of the horses he has slain. Tn 
quick succession two more horses go down before 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 105 

his impetuosity. The excitement among the 
spectators is vociferous and almost without 
hounds. The suspense becomes appalling, as the 
hull begins to gain, more and more, in the com- 
petitive race for the championship. 

At length he becomes indifferent to the attacks 
to turn him from the finish of his human prey. 
The fifth horse goes down. The bull frees his 
horns from the writhing flesh, just as the rider 
struggles to his feet, near the wall. With a 
quickness, almost rivaling the agile spring of the 
panther, before the other bull fighters in the ring 
or the audience above realize what is passing, or 
how it was done, the bull is seen starting on a 
wild career around the ring with the unhorsed 
fighter pinioned on his horns, which have passed 
through the center of the body. 

The climax of human tragedy is reached. Us- 
ually horses and bulls alone perish, men rarely. 
Once in a great while an extraordinary show cul- 
minates as a parting soul wings its way from the 
awful scene. 

The other fighters and the spectators are dis- 
mayed, but not so the bull. It is certain that the 
victim is lost, beyond help or hope. The bull, 
must be killed. There is no other alternative. 
Minutes seem ages. The bull appears the only 
being perfectly reconciled with this trying feat- 
ure of the show. 

Quickly the other bull fighters recover from 
their startling surprise and regain their confused 
presence of mind. But they fail to dispatch the 
bull or check his reckless speed at once. A 



106 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

dozen frightful wounds do not arrest him, till at 
last he falls, exhausted by the loss of blood. The 
fighter is gently released from the horns of the 
now impotent monarch of his absent herd, who 
has perished dumbly brave and all alone in the 
midst of so many human foes. The vanquished 
animal gasps out his last expiring breath into the 
rigid face of his antagonist, cold and stark in the 
icy embrace of death. It is nearly nineteen hun- 
dred years since Calvary, yet Christmas has an- 
other human sacrifice to a rite whose origin and 
object none seems to know nor care, unless it 
started as it yet exists, to satiate a craving to see 
the flow of blood, animal or human, what boots it 
which, so long as there is a sanguinary finish to 
the hilarious shows. 

The people now hie them homeward, satisfied 
with the result of the evening; and the other bulls 
procured for this occasion are kept for another 
day, as five horses, one bull and a man make a very 
respectable real tragedy. 

THE THEATER. 

Christm.as night is the grand theatrical occa- 
sion of the year. Standing room is at a premium. 
The best attainable talent is always present, not 
seldom imported for the holiday season. Mexi- 
cans love the theatre and the circus, and none are 
so poor and wretched tbat the luxury of a bull 
fight, the theater or the circus is not an occa- 
sional indulgence. These things seem to be nec- 
essary elements of popular life. They are the 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 107 

customs and the traditions of a country and a 
people about whom hover a halo of mystic wonder- 
ment. Who could have the heart to deprive them 
of this pittance of enjoyment after the long ages 
of woe that have been their heritage, from sire to 
son, till hope at length seemed an idle whim, a 
dream of mockery? Life among them — the very 
soil of their strange land — has been an endless 
civic drama, a tragic stage, that yet calls aloud for 
mortal sympathy from remotest and even savage 
shores; for have they not passed through scenes 
to touch the heart of the wildest race of earth, 
and call down the retribution of heaven? Ah! 
how slowly grindeth thine relentless mills, ye 
gods; yet are not Mexico and Mexicans at last 
avenged? K'emesis slumbered long, while the 
despoilers of "The land that is fairer than day,^^ 
bathed luxuriantly in metaphoric seas of "milk 
and honey, ^' fancying never ending- immunity was 
theirs. But a change came over the' spirit of 
their dreams, and what a change. 

Hidalgo, the priest, exclaimed "The day for 
more endurance has gone by, and by the eternal 
God this remorseless slavery shall end"; and he 
became a liberating warrior. That his deeds were 
unfeelingly bloody none may deny, yet he dealt 
out the coin of death that he at last received, to 
foes for whom no other mode of warfare had any 
terror. 

When the sun of freedom glowed at last for 
Mexico, and her pale young star came out in the 
galaxy of her liberated sisters, the eldest and the 



108 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

strongest smote and despoiled her afresh, while 
yet in her swaddling clothes of feebleness. 

After this most cruel of all her dastardly undo- 
ino's, and much internal ruin, the French came to 
scourge her anew. But this, too, had an end, as 
did another period of civil strife, and left her free 
and prosperous at last, though not till the present 
day. 

Then, who can grudge her the overflowing 
ecstacy of her festivities? 

THE SHEIXE OF GUADALUPE. 

Guadalu]3e is a name that quickens the pulse 
and inspires a feeling of reverence in every true 
Mexican heart. It is a name that binds Mexico 
indissolubly to the Church of Eome. It is the 
name of the immaculate native virgin, the patron 
saint of Mexico. Tlie story is one of woiulrous 
mystery. That of Mary and Christ combined is 
less sacred to the lowly and ignorant. Guadalupe, 
Mary and Christ make the trio that Protestantism 
can never break. While there is a Church of 
Eome and a Mexico, the religion of the people will 
be Catholic, if not wholly in reality and practice, 
surely in name and form of service. 

The stage on which Guadalupe shadowed forth 
is now a beautiful villa, "Guadalupe," and a 
splendid cathedral, the shrine of the virgin, a 
short .distance south of the city of Mexico, near 
the Mexican railway. This is the Mecca of ^lex- 
ico. Here rests the footsore and weary pilgrim 
from the remotest shore of Mexico. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 109 

The strangest feature of all is that a priest of 
the Church of Eome was the sponsor of the virgin, 
which blended her marvelous story with the 
Church for all time in Mexico, no matter how it is 
esteemed in Eome. No priest denies in Mexico 
the valid sanctity of Guadalupe any more than 
that of Mary and Christ. She is a feature of the 
religion of the Mexicans that Eome herself does 
not dare to wrench from the faith of Catholics in 
Mexico. 

Gruadalupe has exercised a wonderful influence 
among the savage tribes, and served to render 
Mexican character docile and gentle. She has 
never been responsible for any cruelty. 

Her story runs in this wise: A great many ages 
ago, when the dominion of Spain was young in 
Mexico, and the Church little more popular among 
the natives than the government, a priest went 
out to a settlement, beyond the suburbs of Mexico 
City, to hold religious services. He sent an In- 
dian out to gather some flowers. When he re- 
turned with his first tribute the priest sent him 
for a second instalment. 

The Indian had a blanket, called "serape" in 
Spanish, because the early December morning was 
chilly. 

The second time he came without flowers, his 
blanket carefully folded, great beads of perspira- 
tion standing, cold and clammy, on his forehead, 
greatly agitated and speechless. The priest de- 
manded the cause of his singular conduct and per- 
turbance, with some indication of impatience. 
T^'he poor fellow merely put his finger to his lips, 



110 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

as a signal of silence to the priest, unfolded his 
blanket and said not a word. The priest started, 
aghast. He felt indisposed to ask farther ques- 
tions, at the moment. 

The poor Indian's blanket contained the most 
exquisite painting of the most beautiful being the 
priest had ever seen. He kne^A'" the poor man's 
blanket as well as he knew his face and voice. An 
hour before the blanket was plain cloth, without 
any vestige or semblance of any color or figure. 
The painting was clearly supernatural. Xo 
mortal being could do the work in months. But 
the matchless colors and handiwork were past 
human knowledge and skill. The priest was well 
answered, and in no mood to answer questions 
himself. 

There were ]^lenty of other witnesses present, 
who knew the blanket and saw the transformation 
nothing but a miracle could have wrought. 
Til ere was no chance for .imposition, hence no 
room to doubt. This was something that ad- 
mitted no skepticism, that the Indians would 
soon believe everywhere. 

When at lenoth the owner of the blanket recov- 
ered sufficiently to speak, he explained that the 
beautiful being whose living inuige was indelibly 
portrayed on his blanket had a])peared to him and 
placed her likeness on his blanket in an instant. 
Her name was Guadalupe, the Virgin Patron 
Saint of all the Mexicans, nnd that he must pro- 
claim her. and send word to nil the tribes for dole- 
gates to come there to the spot and see the token 
she had left, and hear what he had to tell tliem. 



-/ 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. m 

and that a Pilgrim's Shrine must be built there 
in commemoration, to preserve the blanket and its 
immortal picture, made without the touch of 
hand, in colors no painter's art could ever ap- 
proach. 

The priest naturally regarded the circumstance 
as a heavenly ministration, sent as an auxiliary to 
the work of the holy Church among the heathen 
tribes that did not take any -too kindly to the 
cause of the cross. Hence, he advised the Indians 
to do just as the strange apparition had bid their 
friend, and assured them of every possible assist- 
ance on his part. 

Swifter than tidings of the landing of Cortez 
flew over mountain and plain, the wondrous story 
of Guadalupe was borne to the utmost bounds of 
the dominion of the Spaniard, and beyond. The 
delegates came in return almost as quickly as the 
messengers went. 

Arrived at the scene of the divine miracle, the 
story was told by the Indian who was the owner 
of the now sacred blanket, and the other wit- 
nesses present, when he first brought it to the as- 
tonished priest. The priest let the crescent spell 
work its own destiny. There could be no treach- 
erous deception of the white man in the visitation 
of the chosen of heaven. Seeing was believing. 
Delegates from the tribes became eager converts. 

The early result was the foundation and build- 
ing of a splendid Temple of Guadalupe, which is 
to this day the magnificent Cathedral of Guada- 
lupe, whose ministers have ever been and are 
priests of Eome. 



112 GVIDE TO MEXICO. 

Since then numerous churches and chapels of 
Guadalupe have been built in many sections of 
Mexico, under the auspices of the Church of 
Home, or her representatives in Mexico, and al- 
ways ministered by Eomish priests. 

But the original shrine has ever been and is 
the pilgrim^s goal, where the sacred picture of 
Guadalupe still remains bright and fresh, as its 
startling reality was first unfolded to the eyes of 
the priest; and the Mexican faith is that the souls 
of those who look upon the image of their Virgin 
shall never die. This faith is as beautiful and ad- 
mirable as it is innocent and harmless, so irre- 
proachable that the great and potent Church of 
Eome has never ventured to hurl an anathematiz- 
ing bull at it, nor her priests failed to minister in 
the chapels and temple of the Virgin, nor to hold 
extraordinary services in all the churches of Mex- 
ico on the grand feast day of Guadalupe. 

The day of Guadalupe is December the 12tli, 
the season of pilgrimages to the natal shrine. 
Since the advent of railways, excursion trains run 
for many days from every part of the Republic, 
crowded to their utmost capacity, while un- 
counted thousands make the journey on foot, even 
from the remotest sections of the country. It is 
the grandest holiday of all, except the national 
celebration of the independence of Mexico, Sep- 
tember the 16th, which is entirely different in 
character. The feast of Guadalupe, in Mexico, 
eclipses that of Christmas in other countries. 

Candles are burned all night, even in the most 
distant and humblest mountain cabins. The 



GVIDE TO MEXICO. 113 

poorest peasants go to their nearest market town, 
not seldom fifty miles, to procure a supply of can- 
dles for the sacred occasion. They may be seen 
journeying, afoot, through dust or mud, as the 
case may be, with heavy burdens on their backs, 
of the respective produce of which each is master, 
■even to charcoal and fat pine knots, to exchange 
ior the coveted and necessary supply of candles. 
No hardship nor privation is deemed too great a 
«acrifioe to avoid dereliction in the discharge of 
this imperative duty. It would be a reproach, if 
not a sacrilege, to be without candles. 

Work is suspended all day. Services as impos- 
ing as those of Christmas day are held in all the 
churches. 

In the afternoon the inevitable bull fights are 
in order, the grandest and most costly of the 
whole year being celebrated at Mexico City, owing 
io the great number of pilgrims there, who come 
to visit the nearby Shrine of Guadalupe. Such 
pilgrims all see the City of Mexico, which makes 
a grand boom for business. 

Guadalupe has been so long and is so firmly en- 
ihroned in Mexico that conjecture would be idle 
as to the age when her reign of faith will reach 
its zenith or begin to decline. When it ends 
Eome will fall, unless Mexico is first depopulated, 
or all the native blood of her people drained from 
their veins, so far as the sway of the Church ap- 
plies to Mexico. The growing skepticism of 
countries advanced in all fields of development 
will not take root rapidly in Mexico when Guada- 
lupe becomes the object of their attraction. Edu- 
Mexico— 8 



114 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

cation is not doing anything in the direction of 
eradicating the popuhir faith in the native Virgin. 
It is not likely to do more, as the deep-rooted 
faith, among the wealthy and most intelligent 
classes, is in the hosom of the mother, whence tlie 
daughter is certain to imhibe and transmit it on 
to remote posterity. Among the lowly the fidelity 
is inflexible everywhere, and needs no nurturing. 

Through the medium of this faith that of ]\Iary 
and Jesus has been established in Mexico, under 
the auspices of Catholicism, so securely that 
Protestants are wasting time, energy and money 
in seeking to gain favor among the native people. 
Protestants, as a rule, do not understand the peo- 
ple, nor how to convert them. They know little 
and care less about Guadalupe. They would tear 
her with a sudden wrencli from the native breast. 
The attempt is madness, as none know better than 
the priests, who hold and lead the people at will 
in spiritual matters. Otherwise the Church has no 
more power in Mexico than in the United States, 
and the Protestants have equal show with the 
Catholics, so far as the government is concerned. 
They have neither part nor lot in Guadalupe, and 
hence are witlu)ut influencing power to supplant 
Rome in ^fexico. But for Guadalupe Eome 
would have been exiled when Spain was expelled. 

No convents remain in Mexico, neither of nuns 
nor Jesuits, and are not likely ever to be per- 
mitted again. Tims l^ome is more circumscribed 
in Mexico than in the United States. The con- 
vents were a big loss to Rome in Mexico, though 
far less than they would have been had Guada- 



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116 GVIDE TO MEXICO. 

liipe never appeared and became auxiliary to the 
Church. 

The Temple of Guadalupe is an object of much 
interest to religious people, as it contains many 
ancient jDain tings, some of which are said to ante- 
date the time when the Aztecs came into the 
country, as well as the original picture of Guada- 
lupe, on the same sacred blanket, if holy men do 
not attest untruths. They are sustained by the 
assertion that there is neither paint nor artist 
competent to reproduce the picture, and that no 
artist has lived in the time of its existence able to 
produce it. Be all this as it may, the picture is a 
reality any one may see, and one in which the 
Mexicans have boundless faith. 

The writer is not a Catholic, and would be glad 
to see the growing power of Eome less vigorous 
than it is, owing to a fear that if able Rome would 
overthrow all other institutions of earth, and as- 
sume the supreme sway, alike of church and state, 
regardless of the seas of human blood through 
which she might have to wade to attain that end. 
She is surely advancing steadily toward that goal, 
and may reach and seize it if so disposed. But 
let us charitably hope she cherishes no such even 
remote design. 

However all this may be, Protestants need not 
deceive themselves about the strong, uneradicable 
hold Eome has on Mexico; but it is difficult for a 
cold, dispassionate observer, living in the country 
and daily mingling with the natives, not hearing 
nor speaking a word otlier than Spanish in 
months, to imagine how Protestantism would in 
any way benefit ]\[exico or Mexicans. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. II7 

There are a great many other feast days, mostly 
of church origin, in Mexico, when the poor laborer 
is idle, though the stores are open half the day, 
as they are on Sunday. 

All Saints^ day, November 1st, is the day the 
graves are decorated in Mexico — a beautiful cus- 
tom. The cemeteries and graveyards claim and 
have tributes of floral offerings unapproachable in 
any other part of the world, at that date, as no 
other land, not even Florida, can produce the 
flowers. 

It were heartless to sneer at Guadalupe and 
Mexican faith in her, especially on the part of 
Christians who do not always live as well up to 
their own professions as those poor Mexicans do 
to theirs. God Almighty will never damn the 
Mexicans for a faith that never had a human vic- 
tim, and never caused man to make war on his 
fellow. It is a clean and bloodless faith, that 
never will breed distress on earth. Let the Mexi- 
cans enjoy it in peace, for they deserve a rest. 

AXCIEISTT WONDEES. 

It passes mortal knowledge whether the colossal 
pyramids of Mexico, or mounds, as they are 
known in common parlance, were religious or mili- 
tary. They unquestionably were the product of 
much devotion, great expenditure of current 
wealth, or undisputable slavery, not equaled in the 
construction of the pyramids of ancient Egypt. 

The stupendous one, in Cholula, on the Inter- 
oceanic Railway, some seven or more miles from 



118 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

the city of Puebla, is much larger than the grand- 
est in Egypt. The base, one thousand four hun- 
dred and twenty-three feet square, covers about 
forty-four acres, while the height is one hundred 
and seventy feet. The truncated summit has more 
than one acre surface. The surface of the whole 
structure is now covered with trees and dense 
shrubbery. 

There rests upon the summit a fine church, 
"Xuestra Sehora de los Eemedios," Our Lady of 
Remedies, in English. Historians have generally 
supposed that the great mound was the work of 
the Toltecs, as it is said to have been there when 
the Aztecs came into tlie plateau; but Ignatius 
Donnelly says it is the Tower of Babel, in his book 
entitled "Atlantis.'^ Whv he makes this asser- 
tion it is difficult to conjecture, unless he has 
heard or read something of a belief of some na- 
tives, that it was erected by a family of giants 
that escaped a great flood, and designed to rear it 
above the clouds, but were stopped by fire from 
heaven. 

This coincides with the story of the Hebrew 
flood and the Chinese tradition of a deluge, which 
seems to indicate that all ])eoples must have liad 
a common origin, with legends of creation and 
flood not all unlike. 

Speculation would be idle. The great work ex- 
ists, and was built by human hands, which is all 
we can ever know of its oblivious history. 

The pyramids of the Sun and Moon, in plain 
view of the Mexican TJaihvay, on both sides of the 
station of Otumba, the scene of the bloodiest bat- 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 119 

tie between Cortez and the Aztecs in 1520, are 
near San Jnan Teotihnacan. They are in about 
the same proportion, as to size, as the snn and 
Moon, the one of the Sun being not much in- 
ferior to the monarch of Cholula, just described 
above. The same people were probably the build- 
ers, and the purpose was likely the same, whether 
religious or military. 

There are numerous others in many sections of 
the country, some large, some small, but nearly all 
after one model. 

The ruins of cities the Aztecs are said to have 
found in the country, probably long antedating 
the Toltec race, seem to indicate that they were 
built by the same people who built the mounds. 
The ruins of Mitla, and many other nameless 
cities, are unquestionably evidence of civilization, 
probably not surpassed by that of any other peo- 
ple who ever lived on the earth. There are works 
of defense at Mitla that would make grand object 
lessons to military students and engineers of this 
age. This seems to indicate that the mounds may 
have been connected with great works of defense, 
and had a military, rather than a religious object. 

The ruins of a buried city as large as 'New York 
w^ere discovered on the Gulf Coast in 1897, en- 
tirely overgrown with trees and jungle. There are 
temples and palaces, and abundant other evi- 
dences of a high degree of civilization among the 
inhabitants, whose majestic city was probably 
mouldering in lifeless ruin thousands of years be- 
fore Babylon was founded. This is the most im- 
portant and mysterious discovery yet made amid 



120 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

the mounds and ruins of Mexico. It was certainly 
a mart of foreign commerce of or with people 
who had seagoing craft, and were masters of navi- 
gation. With whom and w^here did they have 
trade to create and sustain a metropolis of such 
stupendous magnitude, clown where the deep blue 
surge of ocean rolls? Was it with Tyre, Carthage, 
Eome, or all or none of these? Could it be the 
"Lost Atlantis'' reposing there, in her long and 
dreamless sleep? Surely she was never arrayed 
in more gorgeous splendor, nor claimed more in- 
habitants than the silent city that slumbers so 
profoundly on that desolate shore. ISTo wonder 
that the murmur of the wave and the song of the 
zephyr are ever sad, when they sigh and chant 
beside and over where there once must have been, 
for short or long, so much mortal agony; for all 
the millions who once smiled and sang and sighed 
and wept, in hovel and palace, never perished in 
the ecstatic bliss of rapturous dreams. How did 
they die? From the famine of siege and the sword 
of conquest, or the tidal wave of the remorseless 
Gulf? Who can tell? Did any ever know, after the 
overwhelming catastrophe? Could it have been 
the horrid shock to earth and nature, when the 
volcanic fires of Orizaba mountain first leaped 
with infernal force, in flaming avalanche, from the 
seething bowels of the world, that snuffed out the 
lamp of life, and left the fated city in eternal soli- 
tude? Something sufficient to wreck a world 
must have meted out that dateless doom. 

There seems to be strong possibility, if not logi- 
cal probability, that whatever force blotted that 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 121 

grand and populous city out of throbbing exist- 
ence, left the whole of Mexico cold and pulseless; 
else why such vast and numerous ruins everywhere 
that bear the same stamp of civilization, and ap- 
pear to have been the wrecks of the same age? 
It may have been depopulating vandal hordes 
from the far north, with which the wealthy and 
indolent denizens of the south were unprepared 
to cope, or the general doom-day of that shore 
and people, A^reaked by some unpropitious freak 
of perverse nature. Any way, they died, and left 
no record, nor yet hereditary story of their mel- 
ancholy fate; and their cities became ruins, never 
since the dwelling place of man. This seems to 
render problematic the theory of conquest: the 
vanquishing stranger would have been likely to 
have made him a home in the luxurious abode 
and stately palace of the despoiled, and preserved 
the beautiful cities for his own people, so they 
•would have remained tenanted when the Aztec 
came. But they, were deserted wastes then as they 
are now, according to the legend of the ancient 
tribes, bequeathed from sire to son and age to age,, 
and told till this day. 

The "Herald,^^ New York, contains elaborate,, 
graphic illustrated descriptions of these ruins, 
that are in no wise overdrawn. 

Books and books would be required to hold mere 
outline sketches of ruins and other prehistoric 
features of Mexico, not yet a part of her written 
history, as the work of discovery is but little pro- 
gressed; and the buried city, that remained wholly 
unknown until a few weeks past, may be no more 



122 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

than a single page in the voiceless marvels of her 
unexplored secret treasures. 

But these are problems that interest the anti- 
quarian and invite the attention of the student of 
ancient history. 

Over the weird, mournful scenes of such woeful 
cities there hovers a spell of pathetic mystery 
that should conjure romantic reverie into sem- 
blance of living forms, and repeople th-at solitary 
shore with beings that teem in the brain, and con- 
struct the inspiring cradle of poetic vision and its 
creative imagery. The unprepared prosy mind 
is rife with shadowy spirits that assume human 
shape and flit in the dread haunts of desolation, 
till they seem endowed with quick feeling and 
sufferance, that come stealing softly back upon 
them, till from the dull, dusty shades of ruin 
springs anev/ into brilliant splendor the lonely city 
of the dead. Who can tell if this is all mere 
dreaming fancy, or if the spirits of the past do not 
really make their presence felt, in some vague, un- 
certain sense, not clearly perceptil)le to the dull 
comprehension of flesh and blood? The experience 
amid siicli scenes of dead ages is fraught with aw- 
ful inspirations, it matters little why or where- 
fore; and one need not feel ashamed to confess the 
weakness tliat is impotent to resist the supernatu- 
ral influence that pervades the very atmosphere, 
and lurks in every shadow of ruin, grey with the 
traces countless years have inijirinted on each 
form and feature. ^lan is but human, and his 
nature ])rone to superstitious weakness, or it may 
be an untaught innate sympathy of his soul, that 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 123 

commnnes'with spirits of the long forgotten dead, 
and stirs too deeply the immortal fountain of his 
being. The dull insensibility of the flesh may 
obscure the vision of the soul, or the medium of 
the mortal may not possess transmitting faculties, 
able to catch and express the impressions with 
which the immortal is pregnant. Perchance it is 
the spirit within us that feels and realizes what 
the mind cannot see nor understand, when striv- 
ing to glance backward along the desolate wake 
of recordless time. It is not all idle nothingness 
that binds us under the responsive spell of name- 
less phantasy, and makes us linger in the spectral 
precincts of a perished world. There is a charm 
beyond and above the silent stage, within the 
dome that echoes nevermore. Where is now the 
dwelling-place of the emancipated spirits of count- 
less multitudes that died violently, without the 
common course of nature? Do not some of them 
lurk in grim recesses of the ruins, where their clay 
tenements repose in dust and ashes? Or may they 
not revisit, if for brief seasons, the weird loneli- 
ness of their native shore? Are they not the in- 
visible hosts of the spirits of pilgrims who go to 
view the shrines of a people whose altars burn no 
more, the very perfume of whose incense vanished 
long, long ago? Do they not try to tell us the 
saddening tragedy, in the scene that was their last 
on earth? Will not some one, some day, with a 
spotless soul, nurtured by a pure and blameless 
life, body forth as a medium, and converse with 
the disembodied spirits, whose phantom presence 
is a conviction, may be a reality, and tell the won- 



-^24 GUIDE TO MEXICO. 

droiis story to the world of life? This would be a. 
priceless revelation, and one not all impossible to 
attain, as records deemed inspired and holy unde- 
niably attest. Cannot the combined science and 
theology of this marvelous age of ever new reveal- 
ing light rear and endow one perfect mortal, fitted 
for the grand and glorious research? 

Poet and priest have vied with each other, por- 
ing over the ruins of Greece and Rome. For 
what? Because they were the fount of letters, 
the cradle of art, perchance transplanted from 
Mexico, near the end of all that was once illus- 
trious and brilliant there, certainly never bred 
from Greek nor Eoman seed. The ruins of Mex- 
ico hold and keep the dormant germs of inspira- 
tion, ready to spring forth into flowers and fruit, 
obedient to the awakening touch of researching 
genius, whose growing page would glow and burn 
with new wonders of unfoiding mystery. The 
vulgar dust we tread is holy, consecrated ground, 
the scene of romance and tragedy, untold by mor- 
tal words; and the air we breathe is melody per- 
sonified, sighing from nests of ocean foam to pin- 
nacles of snow, over a land whose every plant and 
flower exhales the divine essence of unuttered 
song. Florida — Italy — are cold and prosy, and 
never did and never can approach the frostless 
Edens of ^Mexico, where was once, perchance, the 
immortal garden, bartered for the fruit of knowl- 
edge, if ]\Ir. Donnelly errs not as to the site of the 
Tower of Babel. Then let us seek in the mystic 
realms of ]\rontezunia what we may not find in 
lands that have been long more favored. 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 125 

Poets need not call down the "black-eyed maid 
of heaven^^ to inspire their song; for the dark- 
orbed lasses of the torrid clime, laved by the melo- 
dious wave of the sleepless Gnlf, can create a spell 
to mock the power of the Grecian nymph, and 
invoke a muse whose lyre will soar beyond all Gre- 
cian melody. Why not praise the witchery of eyes, 
though mortal, that are divinely endowed — all 
gentleness — whose glance unfolds anew the hun- 
dred tales of love; or, in the flurry of overwrought 
passion — all fierceness — that reveals somewhat, or 
does not all conceal, the spectral story that should 
make their land immortal? 

Near Kansas City, in America, science has 
lately unearthed a battlefield, where countless 
thousands perished in combat more than twenty 
thousand years ago. N'o page of history names 
such numbers slain on any single field of mortal 
strife as repose there on the scene of their name- 
less struggle. Whom were they? Whence came 
they? May not one of the embattled hosts have 
come from Mexico? Perchance the army of Mex- 
ico was overwhelmed, and her fair land and 
matchless cities became a prey to the conquerors. 

These are themes for not all groundless stories, 
that might shame Troy and Marathon, and leave 
Canae and Waterloo eclipsed as mere petty skir- 
mishes. Who will disrobe them of their shroud 
of deep, dark mystery, and fling their breathing, 
pulsating, burning pages fluttering in the gale of 
enlightening revelation? The task might prove a 
labor of love, worthy of a master mind and a cun- 
ning hand — a rare artistic product of modern gen- 



126 



GUIDE TO MEXICO. 



ins. There should, and lanst, be some one thus 
endowed, or that the ruins and muse of Mexico 
would inspire. Once begun, the page will grow 
on, almost alone; the theme is so near a being of 
life and feeling that its lon,2: nent-up spirit will in- 
fuse impelling force into the medium that essays 
to clothe its long neglected, spectral image in a 
robe of language, and lend him a flowery pattern 
wherewithal to fashion and frame his words into 
pictured semblance. 

This is what Mexico has been, and is, and may 
be made, in miniature. She is no niggardly cus- 
todian of her boundless resources — mines of con- 
templation, where research will never exhaust the 
hidden treasures of dead thought and numb feel- 
ing; mines of silver, gold and jewels that will 
never fail; and soil and sunshine for a hundred 
million inhabitants: these, and more untold and 
much that is nameless, woo the stranger to her 
magic shores, far more invitingly bounteous than 
was the ancient Hebrew's fabled land of promise. 
Mexico is a Palestine for all who will to have her 
such, and one that needs no sword nor spear to 
acquire a due portion of her blessings. 



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